Fox News Analyst Gregg Jarrett Invents Legal Doctrine Allowing Presidents To Try To Overturn Elections: ‘He Has Immunity To Do So’

One of the more annoying tactics Republicans deploy when defending Donald Trump at all costs is rewriting history when the truth is too damning. The starkest example of this is their utter whitewashing of the former president’s actions after losing the 2020 election, which he claimed he won. But more than this, he actively tried to subvert the results in multiple states.

To hear Republicans tell it, Trump is being prosecuted in two jurisdictions simply for insisting the election was rigged. They conveniently omit his very real efforts to overturn it.

By now, we are all familiar with those efforts, perhaps none of which were more striking than Trump pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state “find” him 11,780 votes so he could win the state. I suspect the two election-related criminal indictments Trump faces will hinge in part on what he meant by “find.” And while it might not be an argument prosecutors could make, it is inconceivable that if Trump were told he won the state after all, he would care not a whit about where the alleged new votes came from. That’s just one example, to say nothing of his efforts to overturn the results in other states.

All of this is very inconvenient for conservative commentators, particularly legal analysts – many of whom have immolated their reputations by ignoring or distorting facts and the law to exonerate Trump of all wrongdoing. One of these is Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, who can be reliably counted on to tell the network’s viewers that Trump’s actions are always above board. He’s a bizarro version of Lavrentiy Beria. Show him the man, and he’ll show you the exculpatory evidence.

On Thursday, Jarrett appeared on Fox Business to argue Trump not only had “immunity” to act as he did after the election, but he had a duty to do so under the law. But to do so, Jarrett had to misstate the key fact that Trump took measures to try to stay in power even though he lost.

Just look at the astounding dishonesty at work here:

You know, the president has a duty to enforce the laws. If he is seeking to unravel and uncover fraudulent votes, he has immunity to do so. I think that’ll be a motion to dismiss and I think it’s actually a serious motion to be made.

“If he is seeking to unravel and uncover fraudulent votes, he has immunity to do so.”

Jarrett knows Trump did way more than what he describes, but he does not care.

Trump has not been charged with trying to “unravel and uncover fraudulent votes.” Telling a secretary of state to find you the number of votes necessary to win or demanding the state’s governor call a special session of the legislature to declare you the winner is not “seeking to unravel and uncover fraudulent votes,” as Jarrett calls it. It is simply a naked attempt to stay in power, regardless of whether fraud occurred or not. Trump never proved the voter fraud he alleged, but he tried to remain president anyway.

Later, Jarrett went on Hannity, where he actually spoke about Trump’s phone call to the secretary of state:

And in the end, he is demanding a recount and a review, which by the way, Brad Raffensperger has a duty to do. So, he’s asking him, “Do your duty.”

What Jarrett omits here is that by the time Trump was asking the secretary of state to “find” votes for him on Jan. 2, 2021, the secretary of state’s office had already conducted three vote counts, all of which found Trump lost, which the then-president was obviously unwilling to accept.

“He is saying, ‘I need to find that many votes because that is my vote deficit,'” Jarrett continued. “Well, every losing candidate says that, which is why they ask for reviews, recalculations, and recounts.”

Just in case it needs to be pointed out, asking an elections official to “find” enough votes for you to win is not the same thing as asking for a recount. Also, this is not the behavior of “every losing candidate” – just Trump.

Again, this is all very annoying. Conservative pundits who want to survive and thrive in a Trump-dominated right-wing media landscape feel compelled to reverse-engineer excuses for him using tortuous reasoning. And when the facts become a hindrance to that end, they are replaced with falsehoods that fit the narrative.

Lying about what Trump did to claim his actions were legal is no different than saying what he actually did is legal. It is a bad faith argument advanced by bad actors in the service of the objectively bad act of trying to overturn an election.

Watch above via Fox Business Network and Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.