'He got away with all of it!' Morning Joe panel left shocked by end of Trump prosecutions
Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" marveled at the end of another prosecution against Donald Trump after he won re-election to a second term.
Special counsel Jack Smith had a motion to dismiss the Jan. 6 election interference case approved Monday, citing the Justice Department directive against prosecuting a sitting president. MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire expressed astonishment that Trump's legal strategy allowed him to escape accountability in all four criminal cases, including one in which he was convicted on 34 felony counts.
"It's just extraordinary that this is where we are," Lemire said. "Remember those high-profile Jan. 6 House hearings that came ahead of the federal charges there in the election interference case. We remember the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago and the firestorm that created politically, and yet, after two years' worth, this all ends with a whimper.
"This goes away in the most quiet possible way, Donald Trump and his legal team played the waiting game, tried to delay, delay, delay – it worked. They pushed it past the election, he wins. These cases now are abandoned."
Legal analyst Lisa Rubin said the special counsel left open the possibility that the Jan. 6 case could be revived because he asked the judge to dismiss the charges without prejudice, but she also expressed doubts that would actually happen.
"This was inevitable and necessary," Rubin said. "The department's internal policy did not allow for them to do anything else other than to dismiss these cases but, in terms of the contingencies, both of these cases have sort of, like, revival opportunities there only if the Trump Justice Department sort of leaves them alone, and what I mean by that is, first of all, Jack Smith said in his filing to Judge [Tanya] Chutkan [Monday] there's an open question whether the statute of limitations against former President Trump, a five-year statute of limitations, could be paused while he takes office.
"That doesn't mean, for example, that the Trump Justice Department through their own office of legal counsel couldn't issue a new opinion saying it is unconstitutional and that's a possibility that might happen."
Florida-based federal Judge Aileen Cannon has already dismissed charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and Rubin said that Trump could weaken that even further.
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"That dismissal is, of course, only against President Trump, not against the two other defendants, but were I the Trump Justice Department, I'd be thinking about pardons for Walt Nauta and the other two defendants," Rubin said. "If you talk to people in Trump world, they are much more angry about the case and things that went on there than even the federal election interference case. I think that we can expect them to pardon them because they don't want some of what happened there to be rehashed, particularly given the allegations of obstruction of justice against the former president as they manifest in the charges against those two individuals."
The Georgia election interference case has also been cast into doubt, especially since Trump's re-election, and a New York judge has paused sentencing on his convictions in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
"He got away with it – he got away with all of it," Lemire said. "There were four criminal cases against Donald Trump. They have all now, they appear to be all on the verge of going away. Let's talk about the politics of this now. This is now Donald Trump who has emerged victorious electorally and from the legal system. He's going to be emboldened and he might be seeking vengeance."
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