'Beyond the pale and legally wrong:' Expert shreds Trump's Colorado appeal
Donald Trump’s much-anticipated appeal to Colorado’s decision to bump him from its ballot shocked a legal expert who professed himself stunned by its shoddiness, he said.
“The sort of gall that the brief represents, it's really, I think, shocking,” Andrew Weissmann told Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC Wednesday night. “It's really sort of beyond the pale and legally wrong.”
Weissmann, an MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, slammed Trump’s attorneys arguments for both their arguments and their organization.
“There are some legitimate arguments but they’re buried in there,” Weissmann said.
Weissmann quickly contextualized his characterization — “I am not saying legitimate like they should prevail” — then pointed to an opening argument he found fundamentally wrong.
“His lead of argument is that the Constitution of the United States says that the people can elect any one they want,” Weissmann said. “That's not true. There are restrictions and qualifiers in the Constitution.”
Weissmann does not point out that Trump questioned former President Barack Obama’s eligibility over erroneous claims he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.
Weissmann did say of the claim, “That’s without irony.”
What Weissmann found ironic was Trump’s professed fears of disenfranchising 1 million Colorado voters.
He notes, “Donald Trump is charged with, essentially, disenfranchising, trying to disenfranchise 80 million people.”
Watch the video below or click here.