We had a fascinating interview last night on Rachel Mattos program with Donald Trump's
former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
Now, I don't really watch MSNBC, CNN and Fox News other than.
Services that will sort of clip notable things for me that I might want to talk about on
the program.
I haven't seen Rachel Maddow.
Rachel Maddow show in years.
I think the last time I saw it was when she had that episode about, oh, we have Trump's
taxes.
But it was like a 15 year old page, one of a ten forty or something like that.
Last night's interview that Rachel Maddow did with Michael Cohen is fascinating.
And there's a ton of great material in the interview.
I encourage you to check out the entire interview, if it's interesting to you.
But I want to focus in on one thing today, which is Michael Cohen predicted yesterday,
something we've been talking about for a while.
By we I don't mean I mean, you know, with the audience.
It's been in the ether for a while, which is the idea that if Donald Trump loses to
Joe Biden in November, sometime between November and January 20th, Donald Trump will resign
in order to make Mike Pence president, in order for Mike Pence to preemptively issue
a blanket pardon for Donald Trump.
We've been talking about this for a while.
Callers regularly ask about it and suggest it.
Here is Michael Cohen saying he believes that that is exactly what Donald Trump will do
if he loses to Joe Biden in November.
But you said at the very end of the book that the president and Attorney General William
Barr ousted the U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York and tried to install
effectively the president's golfing buddy as the new U.S. attorney there, because the
president, in your view, wanted to arrange for himself to be indicted while he's still
in office because that would give him the opportunity to pardon himself after he lost
the election.
I just wanted to make sure that I understand the point that you're making is to ask you
to elaborate on that a little bit.
I'm not sure I understand.
My my theory is that if he loses, there is still the time between the election and the
time that the next president will take office and in during that time, my suspicion is that
he will resign as president.
He will allow Mike Pence to take over.
And he will then go ahead and have Mike Pence pardon him.
It's a very let's just say it's a very Nixon type of event.
And it was probably discussed between Roger Stone and President Trump at some point.
This is certainly one way to avoid any potential prison time.
So there's a few thoughts here.
There's actually a big legal question here.
And often we hear this kind of flat conventional wisdom that pardons apply only to federal
prosecution.
Presidential pardons apply only to federal prosecution.
But not to state prosecutions.
And that as such.
Mike Pence can't protect Donald Trump from state prosecution.
The counter argument is that some believe a blanket preemptive pardon would cover state
prosecutions.
The counter to that would be, well, there was the idea that that was the case with the
Richard Nixon pardons.
But it was never actually challenged in court because charges were not actually brought.
So we don't really know there really isn't judicial precedent in terms of the legality
or the reality of a preemptive pardon.
Does it cover a potential state charges or does it not?
It's a debate is the point.
The other important counter or or factor is when we talk about Richard Nixon's crimes,
they were much narrower in scope than all of the different stuff that Trump has been
colloquially accused of.
And they really only took place when Nixon was president with Donald Trump.
We're talking about myriad crimes, including crimes allegedly committed before Donald Trump
became president anyway.
And the idea would be preemptive.
Pardon or not?
It's going to be much more difficult for Mike Pence to preemptively get Trump out of trouble
definitively.
That's sort of one aspect of this.
The other important aspect of this entire discussion is that clearly the time between
Election Day and Inauguration Day could be very dangerous if Donald Trump does lose.
Now that I have been saying for a long time and warning people about and we need to account
for that in thinking about how durable are are our institutions, how prepared is Joe
Biden and and the Democratic Party and all other aspects of this country to deal with
what might be armed Trump supporters in the streets between November 3rd and January 20th
if Trump loses and convinces his followers that this thing was rigged?
The most important thing here is Trump would rather just win than to have to deal with
even this idea of should I resign and Pence pardoning me.
So because Trump would rather just win, he's going to do anything he can.
Anything he can think of to win fairly or unfairly.
And yes, our blood should be boiling about what's going on.
And yes, Donald Trump must be at least somewhat scared of what might happen if he does lose.
But he is going to try to solve a personal problem by disenfranchizing you.
That's where the Postal Service stuff comes from.
That's where delegitimizing the trustworthiness of the election is coming from.
That's where all of this is coming from.
So bottom line, I can't see Donald Trump simply accepting defeat.
I don't imagine that if Biden wins, I was looking at one scenario where Biden gets to
eighty nine electoral.
I can't imagine that with Biden at two eighty nine, Trump just says, I concede.
Thanks, guys.
I lost.
I think in the event of a Biden landslide, Trump will come up with something to say.
He's going to start writing executive orders, declaring the results suspect and trying to
postpone a transition.
I don't know.
He's at least going to say something about it if it's close.
He will do everything he can to use lawyers to stop the counting of absentee ballots.
He's going to try something.
I believe he will eventually go.
If he loses, but he's going to try something and we have to make sure that we are prepared
for it.
As I said earlier, I don't know if Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are prepared for
it.
I hope they are.