Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Friday that the Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity may force Judge Juan Merchan to declare a mistrial in former President Donald Trump's New York paperwork trial.
"What the court said in that opinion, I think the headline was that the official acts of the president are immune, but what the court also said, and is now binding law in the United States of America, is that any evidence of those official acts that would be immune, are no longer admissible in court to prove any other crimes," Whitaker said during an appearance on "Wake Up America." "And so that's what Judge Merchan is going to have to wrestle with and decide and quite possibly could lead to a mistrial, because there was a lot of evidence from President Trump's time as president and some of that testimony could have been this immune activities that would no longer be admissible. So, that's going to be a very interesting question, I think, going forward."
On Tuesday, Merchan agreed to weigh the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity and pushed back Trump's sentencing to Sept. 18. He was originally slated to face sentencing July 11 in his New York conviction on felony charges of falsifying business records. Whitaker said that the delay can have major implications for the trajectory of the former president's case.
"First of all, I think it puts a lot of pressure on Judge Merchan to do a fair sentence, and probably takes off putting President Trump in jail for this conviction, if, again, he doesn't toss it out because of the admissibility of evidence question," he said. "But it also, I think, because each of these decisions, whether it's by the D.C. circuit or the D.C. court, whether it's by Judge [Aileen] Cannon down in Florida or whether it's by the [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis case — which is most likely off the table just because of the appeal is going to only be heard in October — all of those cases are dramatically delayed and another interim step, that ability to appeal this question of immunity, and these decisions about immunity at the trial level, can now be appealed immediately. I think it just adds a significant time line to all these cases."
The former Trump official also commented on the possibility of President Joe Biden bowing out of the 2024 race for the White House and the probability of the 25th Amendment being used to remove him from office.
"I think the first thing is, is the decision to bow out and no longer be the candidate for president in 2024 is solely Joe Biden's decision," he said. "He has won all of the primaries leading up to this. He's now heading into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with enough delegates to capture the nomination. And so I think it's only his decision. ... The second thing is, as we head into the '24 election, I think the 25th Amendment is on the table, but, obviously, cabinet officials in the Biden camp are going to have a hard time pulling the trigger on that just because he's the one that gave them their jobs."
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