Katyal: Trump Baiting Biden to Pardon Liz Cheney

Attorney Neal Katyal was on MSNBC this week, and he believes that Donald Trump is trying to set up Joe Biden and Liz Cheney for a sting operation.

According to Katyal, Trump is trying to bait Joe Biden into issuing a pre-emptive pardon for Liz Cheney.

He believes Biden is doing this so Trump can then say they all know Cheney broke the law; otherwise, why issue the pardon?

The Set Up

We all know Cheney bent the rules during the hearing from the January 6 Select Committee.

Communications prove that Cheney was witness tampering with Cassidy Hutchinson.

Hutchinson went from denying everything to completely flipping her story after Cheney set her up with a new attorney and coached her on what to say before the committee.

Now, regular courtroom rules do not apply to committee hearings, but this clearly does not look good for Cheney.

She continues to maintain everything she did was above water, but Trump has been hitting her pretty hard at his events, which is what led to the hypothesis of Katyal.

While appearing with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Katyal stated, “I think what Trump is trying to do here is to bait President Biden into pardoning Liz Cheney, and that'll allow Trump to say, ‘Hey, look even Biden thinks Liz Cheney did something wrong.'”

As I stated above, since committee hearings are not a court of law, nothing the DOJ could hit Cheney with would likely be able to stick, but this is about public perception.

I agree that Trump would much rather have that pardon issued so he would not have to put on the show of going after Cheney only to be defeated when the charges did not stick.

To that point, Katyal stated, “It would fail right at the get-go, not just because there’s no crime here or any credible allegation, but also because Liz Cheney, as a member of Congress at the time, is entitled to the constitutional protection of speech or debate immunity.”

I would really like for Congress to change the rules so that hearings had to follow the same rules as the courtroom, which would have nullified virtually all of Cassidy’s testimony because it was all hearsay, some of it second and third-handed.

Until then, there is simply no reason for Congress to follow the rules, which means these hearings they hold will continue to be one-sided based on the party in charge.