Rachel Maddow Says Trump’s Lawyers Are Quitting Because They’re Stuck Defending Him or Lying Under Oath | Video

Rachel Maddow addressed the question that many lawyers assigned to defend President Trump and his administration in court are facing right now: Trump or the truth?

“For weeks now, we have seen this pattern emerging,” the “Rachel Maddow Show” host observed on Thursday night. “You’ve got lawyers representing the Trump administration who are being forced effectively to present arguments that either aren’t truthful or don’t make sense in court.” This pattern has resulted, Maddow noted, in “Trump administration lawyers basically being thumbtacked to the back wall of the courtroom by one judge after another.”

The Trump administration has been forced multiple times since it took office in January to defend its actions and executive orders in federal court. More often than not, Maddow said, this has put their legal defenders in a difficult position. “You have to be truthful to a judge. You have to be truthful to the court,” she explained. “But being truthful in this administration is seen as a betrayal of Donald Trump. So what are these lawyers supposed to do?”

Maddow continued, “In this case, you just do the right thing, right? You zealously represent your client, yes, but you always tell the truth… If you do that as a Trump administration lawyer, you will get fired for it.”

“All the Justice Department lawyers who are seeing that pattern emerge are sitting there thinking, ‘Do I want to lie to a judge and therefore be exiled from the legal profession? Or do I want to not lie to a judge and get fired from the Trump administration?” she added. “They’re all quitting.” The MSNBC anchor went on to note that at least half of the frontline lawyers at the Solicitor General’s Office, whose job it is to defend the presidential administration in front of the Supreme Court, have either quit or announced their intention to do so.

“We are now seeing this untenable situation reach its natural mathematical conclusion in a pretty dramatic way,” Maddow reported. “At least half of the lawyers whose job it is to defend Donald Trump at the Supreme Court, a majority of the office that has that responsibility, [have] now quit or [are] about to quit. That seems like a bad sign in terms of what this administration is up to.”

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