Rachel Maddow Tells Trump To Brace For A Criminal Trial After Supreme Court Tax Return Ruling

Last updated on February 24th, 2021 at 02:11 am

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow painted a grim picture for Donald Trump on Monday night, saying that the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the release of the ex-president’s tax returns means a criminal trial could be coming for Trump.

“What the Supreme Court set in motion today is something that does not involve federal prosecutors and that whole SDNY mess,” Maddow said. “These are state prosecutors, and their case is moving forward and there really is now … the startling prospect of a criminal trial of a former U.S. president.”

The MSNBC host said that even though prosecutors in New York are moving forward with their case against Trump, incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland must get to the bottom of why William Barr used the Justice Department to shield the former president.

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“One of the things that Merrick Garland is going to have to sort out when he is confirmed as the nation’s next attorney general is why his predecessor, William Barr, personally spent weeks leaning on prosecutors at SDNY to try to get them to go easy on that case,” she said.

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Maddow said:

Lots of questions remain as to what happened to the culpability of Individual 1 in that case, let alone the president’s business and those who signed off on those bogus checks to Michael Cohen which were really repayments for the campaign finance felonies he was committing but were disguised to look like business expenses. One of the things that Merrick Garland is going to have to sort out when he is confirmed as the nation’s next attorney general is why his predecessor, William Barr, personally spent weeks leaning on prosecutors at SDNY to try to get them to go easy on that case. And then Barr ultimately fired the U.S. attorney in charge of that office. Merrick Garland is going to have to sort that out. The solution to that cannot be don’t do it again. The solution to that has to be accountability for those who abused the Justice Department and the justice process in ways that were designed to shield the president from accountability, if that is, in fact, what happened there. But what’s happened here, what the Supreme Court set in motion today is something that does not involve federal prosecutors and that whole SDNY mess. These are state prosecutors, and their case is moving forward and there really is now … the startling prospect of a criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

Justice is coming for Donald Trump

Donald Trump spent four years in the White House abusing his office while Republicans in Congress and his fixer at the Justice Department looked the other way.

But last November, the American people turned out in record numbers to tell Trump he’s fired.

Now, without the presidency to shield him from accountability, a freight train of justice is heading toward Donald Trump.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.