Reminding the world of how the liberal media are still obsessed with Donald Trump, Sunday night MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan brought on legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner to advocate for the federal and state prosecution of Trump for murder over “avoidable COVID deaths.” Hasan excitedly announced that Kirschner is “calling on all 50 state attorneys general to investigate Trump for avoidable COVID deaths” and Kirschner crazily predicted that Trump will be “prosecuted for these manslaughters” because he said that he ignored the advice of the liberal media’s beloved Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Hasan began by bashing Trump for stating in a Fox News interview that he did not listen to Fauci and hyping Kirschner’s claim that Trump should be “criminally investigated over COVID deaths”:
He just came out and said it. He ignored the advice of his own medical experts. But will he ever be held accountable? Our next guest says he should be. He’s calling on all 50 state attorneys general to investigate Trump for avoidable COVID deaths. Joining me now is MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner. Glenn, thanks for coming on the show tonight. You want Trump criminally investigated over COVID deaths.
As readers may recall, MSNBC was all-in for Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) as recently as December of 2020 and praised his performance despite the fact that he is responsible for as many as 15,000 COVID deaths in nursing homes due to an executive order which sent COVID patients to nursing homes.
Back in the present, Kirschner launched into a crazy rant where he alleged that there are the “elements of one of the lower-level homicide offenses” present in Trump’s handling of the pandemic because he “did the opposite” of what Fauci told him to do (click “expand”):
As a former career homicide prosecutor, when I look at the elements of one of the lower-level homicide offenses, whether we call it involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, different jurisdictions call it different things, there are really only three things that must be proved. The first thing is that Donald Trump engaged in grossly negligent conduct. We can check that box, that his grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to others, check. And the third element, which sounds tougher than it is to prove, is that he, thereby, caused the death of another. But causation in the law is defined as your grossly negligent conduct being a substantial factor in bringing about the death. And now courtesy of the intro you just did, Mehdi, we now have an admission of guilt from Donald Trump's own mouth. He said Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the preeminent infectious disease experts in this nation, indeed in the world, was giving me advice on how to best protect the health of the American people and I did the opposite. That statement will make an appearance in a court of law when Donald Trump is finally prosecuted for these manslaughters.
Disagreeing with the opinion of one man, who frequently contradicts himself, is enough to land Trump in prison!
Of course, absurd and outrageous statements are nothing new to Kirschner. Starting in March 2020, he insisted that Trump should face “negligent homicide or voluntary/involuntary manslaughter” charges for his handling of COVID, accused former Attorney General William Barr of “trying to suppress truthful information” about Trump’s tax returns, and stated that Democratic questioning during the first Trump impeachment trial gave him “patriotic goosebumps.”
Hasan responded by comparing Trump’s handling of COVID to someone directly killing someone in “a car accident” and lamenting that President Biden “doesn't seem interested in holding Trump to account for anything”:
I do hope you're right because it seems to me bizarre that more than half a million Americans can die, more than the World War II death toll, the World War I U.S. death toll, you know, Vietnam, et cetera and no one is held responsible for that? I mean, if you know, people cause car accident and people die, they get prosecuted. It seems bizarre to me that people in the administration wouldn't get prosecuted. And yet you have a new administration, Glenn, the Biden administration, which doesn't seem interested in holding Trump to account for anything, you know, January 6th, his role in that, or let alone COVID. I mean, I would like to see a COVID crimes commission to investigate people across the board for their role in this, at a federal and a state level but we haven't seen any sign of that.
MSNBC is more concerned with irrationally hating Donald Trump than it is in being a news organization.
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Read the full March 28th transcript here:
MSNBC's The Mehdi Hasan Show
03/28/21
8:32:36 PMMEHDI HASAN: [Trump] just came out and said it. He ignored the advice of his own medical experts. But will he ever be held accountable? Our next guest says he should be. He’s calling on all 50 state attorneys general to investigate Trump for avoidable COVID deaths. Joining me now is MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner. Glenn, thanks for coming on the show tonight. You want Trump criminally investigated over COVID deaths. One study this week from UCLA said there were 400,000 deaths nearly that could have been avoided. Deborah Birx is now saying something similar. But most legal experts say it's just too hard. The bar is too high to criminally link Trump, the President in D.C. at the time, to any of those individual deaths at the state level.
GLENN KIRSCHNER (MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST AND FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): I disagree, Mehdi because here’s the thing. As a former career homicide prosecutor, when I look at the elements of one of the lower-level homicide offenses, whether we call it involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide, different jurisdictions call it different things, there are really only three things that must be proved. The first thing is that Donald Trump engaged in grossly negligent conduct. We can check that box, that his grossly negligent conduct was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to others, check. And the third element, which sounds tougher than it is to prove, is that he, thereby, caused the death of another. But causation in the law is defined as your grossly negligent conduct being a substantial factor in bringing about the death. And now courtesy of the intro you just did, Mehdi, we now have an admission of guilt from Donald Trump's own mouth. He said Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the preeminent infectious disease experts in this nation, indeed in the world, was giving me advice on how to best protect the health of the American people and I did the opposite. That statement --
HASAN: Yeah.
KIRSCHNER: -- will make an appearance in a court of law when Donald Trump is finally prosecuted for these manslaughters.
HASAN: I do hope you're right because it seems to me bizarre that more than half a million Americans can die, more than the World War II death toll, the World War I U.S. death toll, you know, Vietnam, et cetera and no one is held responsible for that? I mean, if you -- you know, people cause a car accident and people die, they get prosecuted. It seems bizarre to me that people in the administration wouldn't get prosecuted. And yet you have a new administration, Glenn, the Biden administration, which doesn't seem interested in holding Trump to account for anything, you know, January 6th, his role in that, or let alone COVID. I mean, I -- I would like to see a COVID crimes commission to investigate people across the board for their role in this, at a federal and a state level but we haven't seen any sign of that.
KIRSCHNER: We haven't seen it yet and I know we're always waiting for the -- the next white knight to gallop in and -- and clean up Donald Trump's mess. I'm not saying Merrick Garland, the new Attorney General, is that white knight. What I am saying Mehdi, though, is he is a deadly serious crime fighter. I mean, the man broke his sort of, you know, his public corruption teeth on the Mayor Marion Barry prosecution in my old office in D.C. He then cut his domestic terrorism teeth supervising -- overseeing the investigation and prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombing.
HASAN: Yeah.
KIRSCHNER: And what he said when he took over that investigation was that I guarantee you, I promise you, we will hold everyone accountable for what they just did to the federal building in Oklahoma, but we will do it in a way that honors the Constitution. I take Merrick Garland at his word and I think he is going to tackle the crimes he sees in the Trump administration.
HASAN: Let's hope so. We need accountability.
