Andrew Weissmann responds to MAGA’s attacks on Trump’s conviction: “You can’t just say these are judges who did this. These are people from the community who made this decision.”

NICOLE WALLACE (HOST): The first former American president convicted as a felon is talking about terrorists and people from mental institutions coming into our country. Donald Trump is using the exact same words that he used to explain his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. He called it a, quote, rigged election. He called it a, quote, rigged trial. His problem, Andrew, was that there was no change of venue and he had to be tried in a place where, quote, we’re at five percent.

To return to Rachel’s argument, he has such a perverse understanding of the rule of law that he believes that if he were in a position where he did not have, quote, five percent political support, the outcome would have been different.

ANDREW WEISSMANN: I think it’s a fundamental lack of acceptance that people act out of principle and not self-interest, and that jurors can’t be trusted unless they’re MAGA Republicans. Essentially, he’s saying that the jury of my peers needs to be made up of people who voted for me.

WALLACE: Yes.

WEISSMANN: That was rejected, you know, when I was on the Mueller team. The constant refrain was we don’t want to be in D.C., which was code for we don’t want a black juror. We want to be, you know, a white place with Republicans. That was rejected in the Watergate case. It was rejected in the Mueller investigation. That’s not how our criminal justice system works. It’s also fundamentally so unwelcoming to citizens, to people who – and that’s how our system works.

These are not – you can’t just say it was judges who did this. These are people from the community who made this decision.

I also think that Donald Trump does not have the authority to testify in court. But if he comes out and says that things are rigged and that this is now happening at the political level, the response to him at the political level is, “You know what? Then you would have taken the stand and wanted them to hear your voice.”

WALLACE: Right.

WEISSMANN: Take the damn stand. You didn’t testify in the first impeachment or the second. You could have testified in the E. Jean Carroll case. You could have testified here. You could have done all of that. So don’t tell me this was a rigged trial if you didn’t stand up and rebut Michael Cohen. You didn’t do any of that.

WALLACE: You don’t get upset about many things, but this attack, this defamation of the rule of law, hits you like nothing else.

WEISSMANN: Well, I spent 21 years in the Justice Department.

WALLACE: You’ve seen this before, the attacks on the Mueller investigation.

WEISSMANN: Absolutely. But to be clear, it’s — the attack on the rule of law is also something you’ve seen, which is the attack on journalism. That’s all an interplay that undermines our institutions and then turns the tables to say that somehow this is a nation in decline. Nobody can be happy today, but this is a day when we’re seeing the rule of law. I mean, I think Rachel is absolutely right that this is really about our democracy at a shining moment, led by a really outstanding, wonderful judge who was completely dispassionate.

And as we said before the verdict, this was a fair trial. So you have to live with that. And that is, I think, the path that takes our country into the modern age. I mean, there are so many countries, England, France, Italy, Israel, Argentina, that have done all of that. And they’ve done it much better than we have. And you know, we see ourselves as this first world country that is a shining beacon on the hill. Today is an example of that.