MSNBC host Rachel Maddow floated the idea that former President Donald Trump could “avoid jail time” by making a plea deal vowing not to run for president again.
During Wednesday’s broadcast of “The ReidOut,” Anchor Joy Reid said, “What are the chances that Donald Trump and I had not thought about until you said it, that instead of going through with this trial, he takes a plea with the vowed to not run for president again as Spiro Agnew did in the 70s.”
Maddow responded, “I don’t know what the odds are.”
She continued:
“I can’t imagine him pleading guilty to anything. Who among us wants to spend too much time floating around inside his mind, even proverbially?”
“So who knows what’s gonna happen? But if this is as strong a case as the indictment makes it look, and that’s the prosecution’s best case, it will get challenged in court. It will be an adversarial process,” Maddow said.
“We will see how strong the defenses are. But if the indictment is that strong and the Justice Department is going to treat this as a like case compared to other people who have been charged under the Espionage Act, then he is looking at jail time.”
“What would Trump do to avoid jail time? I guess, I literally suppose, that he would do anything. And if it’s going to come to him avoiding jail time, now that this indictment exists, he’s either going to have to win in court defending himself against the charges by saying, ‘Yes, I did it,’ is not a good defense.” Maddow continued.
“So how else can you avoid jail time? You can plea in exchange for leniency,” Maddow stated.
Maddow added:
“Spiro Agnew used that is a get out of jail free card. It’s not just that he was vice president; it was the prosecutors assumed that he was about to become president because Nixon was teetering; they were right.”
“In order to keep Agnew out, they traded him jail time for his resignation,” Maddow said as she attempted to make comparisons to Trump.
This isn’t Maddow’s first suggestion that Trump could avoid jail time with a plea deal.
Last week, the leftist anchor openly admitted that Trump’s indictment was a “political solution” to stop him from returning to the White House.
“You have to wonder if the Justice Department is considering whether there is some political solution to this criminal problem,” Rachel Maddow told Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC on the Trump indictment.
“Whether part of the issue here is not just that Trump has committed crimes, but that Trump has committed crimes and plans on being back in the White House,” she said.
“Do they consider as part of a potential plea offer, something that would proscribe him… proscribe him from running for office again? I don’t know.”
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