Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal slammed Donald Trump’s call to Georgia officials on Sunday, saying the president sounded like a mob boss and not a particularly smart one.
Katyal was commenting on the leaked recording of the bombshell phone call from Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump pleaded, then threatened Raffensperger to “find” or “recalculate” enough votes so he could win the state.
“I’ve heard the extraordinary excerpts that The Washington Post has, and, at least based on those excerpts, it sounds like Donald Trump is talking like a mafia boss, and not a particularly smart mafia boss at that. This is the way that people in organized crime rings talk,” Katyal, who worked in the Obama administration, told MSNBC.
“Maybe that works in the Soviet Union or something. It certainly hasn’t been the way that America, the American government, has operated,” he added.
Katyal, now a law professor at Georgetown University, characterized the call as “really, truly, an impeachable offense.” Federal law “prohibits a federal official from interfering in a state election process,” he said. “That sure seems like what we heard on the tape.”
Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe agreed with Katyal’s assessment:
Michael Bromwich, inspector general of the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, also said Trump’s specific demand for 11,780 votes to put him over the top followed by threats and insults appeared to constitute criminal behavior:
Check out Katyal’s comments in the video clip above.
