Most of us envision the Secret Service as a way to protect the President and his family from physical harm. We are generally okay with this. This is not a normal Presidential family, in case you are living on Mars and just catching up.
No, this Presidential family is using the Secret Service to protect them from being served subpoenas in an investigation into an attack by a foreign government that led to said Presidential family stealing the presidency. Are we okay with THIS? Survey says NOOOOOOO.
Fortunately, Jill Wine-Banks joins Lawrence O'Donnell to explain that lawyers on Robert Mueller's team have a remedy - they are going into Federal Court to request they be allowed to simply send the subpoenas through the U.S. Mail. This is often allowed when all other avenues have been exhausted.
Baby boy Kushner is hiding behind the skirts of Ivanka's Daddy's right to Secret Service protection. Let's hope the good 'ole U.S. Mail can break through.
Oh, and for the record? Jill's pin on the show last night was STRAIGHT FIRE. Make sure you watch the video.
Transcript below:
GIULIANI: If they issue a subpoena, that will be -- that will be unprecedented in the sense that it's pretty clear that a president can't be subpoenaed to a criminal proceeding about him.
O'DONNELL: And Jill Wine-Banks, who subpoenaed a president, is back with us. Jill, Rudy Giuliani, of course, is legally wrong about that, in the Watergate case, you clearly established that the president could be subpoenaed, but tell us how Richard Nixon was subpoenaed. How did you actually serve that subpoena to get Richard Nixon's tapes?
WINE-BANKS: It was something we actually had to think about, but it turned out to have a very simple answer because for all the bad things that Richard Nixon did, he did have some respect for the law and he allowed his attorneys to accept service of process. Which is a very typical way of any defendant being served, is the lawyer for the defendant accepts the service. But it would be very hard. You can't just walk into the White House and you can't just walk up to the president, so it isn't that easy, just as we've seen now with Jared Kushner, you can't walk up to Jared Kushner and say, "Hi, I have something for you." You have to have a way to get past the Secret Service. If they are determined to protect him, that's going to be very hard.
O'DONNELL: So now the lawyers who have been trying to serve this legal process on Jared Kushner have gone into Federal Court explaining to the judge, "We have exhausted every method for doing this and what we would now like to do is simply send him this legal process in the mail," just in first-class mail, not in certified mail because they've already tried that. That requires a signature. In cases like this when the judge believes you've exhausted every conceivable way of getting through some kind of roadblock on a subpoena, judges do typically allow these works around those kinds of roadblocks, don't they?
WINE-BANKS: Yes, they do. This would be a very logical way because the U.S. Mail does get through. So it would be delivered to his house and that would be enough. They also sometimes allow e-mails to be sent to deliver the documents. So I think this is the only way around it. They've filed the motion and they've laid out why they cannot use any of the other normal means of service, why they have been repelled from being allowed to do that, and that this is the only thing left that they can think of, is to actually just mail the documents to him.
O'DONNELL: But Jared Kushner has managed to eat up three months of the clock through this.
WINE-BANKS: Yes.
O'DONNELL: That's exactly what we can expect President Trump to do if there is any subpoena coming his way.
WINE-BANKS: I would say the president can do it for even longer, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: Even longer, yes. Jill Wine-Banks, thank you very much for joining us tonight with your unique experience on subpoenas for presidents.
