Trump lawyers 'painted themselves into a corner' with 'utter nonsense' claim: expert

Donald Trump's lawyers "painted themselves into a corner" by staking an absolute position on presidential immunity, according to a legal expert.

The former president's attorney, John Sauer, argued Tuesday before a seemingly skeptical three-judge appeals court panel that the Constitution does not allow for criminal prosecutions of chief executives unless they have been both impeached and convicted by Congress, but legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" why that was a mistake.

"I think they painted themselves into a corner by taking this absolutist position that was simple, silly and wrong," Rosenberg said. "The notion that the only way you can prosecute a former president in this case if he's impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate, then you can proceed, is utter nonsense. They lacked any subtlety."

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Trump's attorneys filed briefs before the hearing that cited a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that could have supported their claim, but instead they insisted that former presidents enjoyed extremely broad immunity, even when a judge asked whether he could escape prosecution for ordering SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.

"You read their briefs, and I'm a nerd who read their briefs before the argument, I saw this coming," Rosenberg said. "They painted themselves into a corner, so the questions that we heard from the judges are exactly the questions you would expect. Judges love to test hypotheticals, they love to trot out the most ridiculous example. You don't expect a good litigator to take it at face value, you'd expect them to distinguish it. There was a way to distinguish it, [but] he didn't do it. It was a ridiculous answer and it exposes to fallacy, I think, of their argument."

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