‘That’s a Bad Moment’: Elie Honig Drags Trump DOJ Lawyer Who Told Supreme Court, ‘We Don’t Know’ 

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer had “a bad moment” before the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig.

Shortly after taking office in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that it is the administration’s position that children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents or parents living in the country temporarily are not U.S. citizens. That view is contrary to more than 120 years of precedent regarding the 14th Amendment, which says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

On Thursday, the court heard oral arguments, centering around three nationwide injunctions in favor of plaintiffs suing the administration over the executive order. Although it’s the injunction issue that is directly before the court, the 14th Amendment nonetheless looms over the case.

On CNN’s The Source later that evening, host Kaitlan Collins played audio of Justice Brett Kavanaugh grilling Sauer about how the government would enforce Trump’s executive order:

SAUER: The states can continue to– the federal officials will have to figure that out.

KAVANAUGH: How?

SAUER: So, you can imagine a number of ways that the federal officials could.

KAVANAUGH: Such as?

SAUER: Such as they could require a showing of documentation showing legal presence in the country for a temporary visitor, for example…

KAVANAUGH: For all the newborns? Is that how that’s gonna work?

SAUER: Again, we don’t know.

“I mean, Kavanaugh sounded pretty skeptical there,” Collins said in the understatement of the day.

“Yeah, that’s the sound of a justice unconvinced,” Honig replied. “That’s a bad moment for John Sauer… I think Trump’s going to lose ultimately on birthright citizenship. I think his position departs too far from the way we’ve looked at that for 157 years.”

Honig went on to say that it is unclear to him how the court will come down on the central matter of nationwide injunctions issued by district court judges.

Watch above via CNN.