Anti-Trump Legal Pundits — Including Jeffrey Toobin, Jennifer Rubin, and George Conway — Meet Weekly to Discuss His Trials
Shannon Stapleton/Pool Photo via AP
A group of anti-Trump legal pundits representing a wide range of media outlets meet weekly to discuss the former president’s trials, indictments, and more, according to a new report from Politico.
Among the common attendees are CNN’s Norm Eisen, Jeffrey Toobin, and Elie Honig, Lincoln Project alum George Conway, MSNBC’s Andrew Weissmann, Barbara McQuade, and Joyce White Vance, The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin, Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, and The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol.
Here’s Politico‘s Ankush Khardori’s description of the meetings:
What’s typically on the agenda? “It’s usually about what’s coming up this week,” the participant told me, “which is one of the reasons I’ll dial in, because sometimes I won’t realize that there’s a hearing on [something] this week. But especially if I want information about things that are going to drop — indictments, decisions — sometimes there’s behind-the-scenes information that’s useful. Like, ‘This indictment’s not going to come Monday, but it might come Tuesday.’ And a lot of times that’s wrong.”
The calls are not always about Trump’s voluminous legal problems. The group has also discussed the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and the so-called “major questions doctrine,” which conservative justices used last year to block a part of Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness effort. But Trump’s legal questions are typically the main event.
While Khardori rejected the idea that the meetings represent confirmation of the vast legal conspiracy that Trump alleges is working against him, he did submit that there are some potential problems with them, especially considering their “distinct anti-Trump tilt.”
“There is a risk, for instance, that the calls could breed groupthink or perhaps help dubious information spread, where it might then reach people watching the news,” he wrote.
One member of the group admitted that “the anti-Trump composition of the group sometimes guides the conversation.”
“It happens, but it’s rare that somebody says, ‘Well, I think this is a better argument for us,’ or ‘I think that that’s a stupid argument that we shouldn’t be making,'” remarked the anonymous attendee.
Honig, it can be inferred, is somewhat of an anomaly within the group, sometimes sparring with the others over their interpretation of the strength of the arguments made against Trump. In once case documented by Khardori, he spiritedly contested former federal judge J. Michael Luttig’s assessment of the chances of Trump being disqualified from the presidency.
The CNN senior legal analyst put Luttig, Conway, and Tribe on blast last month for offering “up an ‘amen’ chorus” and dismissing skeptics of the disqualification cases wholesale.
“Turns out you can’t bludgeon the Constitution into the ground with hyperbolic, conclusory rhetoric,” he gloated.
