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CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig called out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday for claiming that there is “nothing out of the ordinary” in how the legal system is treating former President Trump.
On Thursday, Honig wrote a column for New York Magazine where he scorched Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “procedurally irregular” 165-page federal court filing regarding Trump’s immunity from prosecution.
“The larger, if less obvious, headline is that Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense; he’ll bend any rule, switch up on any practice — so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects. At this point, there’s simply no defending Smith’s conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis,” Honig wrote.
He also wrote, “Anyone who objected to James Comey’s outrageous announcements about the Hillary Clinton email investigation on the eve of the 2016 election should feel the same about Smith’s conduct now,” and rhetorically asked what distinction there could be between these two cases.
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig called out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for claiming that there is “nothing out of the ordinary” in how the legal system is treating former President Trump. (CNN)
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Clinton rejected the comparison, however, arguing there is “nothing out of the ordinary” in this case.
“I think the situation is completely different, and this is in the context of an ongoing criminal procedure that the special counsel has brought against Donald Trump many, many months before the run-up to the election,” Clinton said in an interview. “It was, frankly, motivated by the orders of the judge in this trial, who has, it appears to me, been extremely favorable toward Trump, so I think that there is nothing out of the ordinary.”
The CNN legal analyst, when asked for his response, argued Clinton has “got her facts wrong,” including possibly confusing Judge Aileen Cannon and Judge Tanya Chutkan.
“Well, all respect to Secretary Clinton, she’s the one who suffered the consequences for James Comey’s, I believe, outrageous conduct in 2016; DOJ found later that it was outrageous. The problem, though, with Secretary Clinton’s analysis of the Jack Smith case is, respectfully, she’s got her facts wrong,” Honig said.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival on May 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)
“First of all, she’s confusing the judges here. I think she’s thinking of Judge Cannon, who, yes, has ruled almost entirely for Donald Trump. But that’s the judge in the other case. The judge here is Judge Chutkan. I get it, similar names — Judge Chutkan has ruled almost entirely against Donald Trump,” he said.
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Honig went on to chastise Clinton for arguing that there was “nothing out of the ordinary” with this case.
“More to the point, the last thing we just heard Secretary Clinton say was — quote — ‘There is nothing out of the ordinary.’ But as I described before, the way they flipped this procedure is the opposite of the ordinary,” he said.
“They reversed the actual way that motions are done. You can talk to a hundred former federal prosecutors who’ve collectively handled 100,000 cases. They will all tell you they never filed their motions first. And I think it begs the question, what was the rush here? Why did Jack Smith have to ask for this, to quote Judge Chutkan, procedurally irregular approach?” Honig said. “So, I respectfully disagree with the secretary there.”
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‘ Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.
