“It's really sort of beyond the pale and legally wrong," says former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann
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"This is a bizarre document, and I think it reflects the weakness of Trump's position,” he said.
"He is throwing stuff up at the wall, or throwing stuff up in a zoo cage, and seeing what would stick,” Conway said, noting that Trump lacks “real appellate advocates” on his legal team and that the filing is effectively “channeling Trump’s narcissism.”
"The third reason, I think, is the fundamental weakness of his position. The fifth point in this brief, point five, Roman numeral five, is he didn't engage in insurrection. It is not number one. The reason is, it's because his arguments are very, very weak. If you look at the question in terms of President Trump should be removed from the ballot, it's kind of a shocking notion to those of us who haven't lived, until now, in an era where public officials engage in insurrection. But it was familiar to the people who enacted the 14th amendment,” he said.
"When you go through the issues one by one by one, the way lawyers are supposed to, his case looks terrible," he added.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, noted that Trump’s argument that he did not engage in insurrection is a “weak argument.”
“First on the facts but second, the Supreme Court’s not going to touch that,” he said. “They’re not a fact-finder, they don’t do trials. They generally won’t make that kind of finding.”
"And then the fourth argument is this claim that the term 'officers,' as it's used in the insurrection clause, doesn't include the president. I tend to side with Colorado and [the plaintiffs] on that one. You can carve that up linguistically either way but just [on] common sense, how could it not apply to the president?” Honig questioned. "All of this is new… whatever happens here, we're all going to learn together."
