Chief Justice John Roberts went so far out of his way to throw Donald Trump a "lifeline" that he ended up ignoring the plain language of a law, a former prosecutor said.
Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor who frequently appears on MSNBC as a legal expert, called out Roberts for a recent decision in which Kirschner says the Supreme Court made legal issues easier for the former president and those who attacked the Capitol on his behalf in 2021.
"The Supreme Court just threw Donald Trump and some of his fellow insurrectionists, his foot soldiers, a lifeline," Kirschner said on his "Justice Matters" broadcast.
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He specifically highlights a recent case in which the Supreme Court shook up the Justice Department's prosecution of several January 6 defendants by ruling that they couldn't be charged with obstruction simply for rioting at the Capitol. Trump is reportedly trying to capitalize on the ruling with a motion to have the charges against him in special counsel Jack Smith's election conspiracy case dismissed, but experts say it won't work.
Kirschner says the high court, involving a Jan. 6 defendant, said the law involved was only supposed to be related to things like evidence tampering, as opposed to merely impeding an official act.
He explains that there are two parts of the law, C1 and C2, and that C1 requires documents to be altered or otherwise interfered with. However C2, as Kirschner tells it, clearly does not mandate that.
"To violate C1, you need to mess with a document, but to violate C2, you don't," the former prosecutor stated.
But in Roberts' ruling, he stated that the entire law was dependent upon documents, according to Kirschner.
"OK, Mr. Chief Justice, I don't see in section C2 where it says you gotta mess with a document. It doesn't say it. It's not in there."
On X, Kirschner said Roberts "DISREGARDS plain language of law."
