A perp walk and a jail term might not be enough to satisfy Tiffany Cross's bloodlust for Donald Trump. Now we're talking the possibility of . . . the needle!
As we've previously noted, MSNBC's Cross harbors a lurid fantasy of Donald Trump being arrested "COPS"-style. She broke that out again on her Saturday show, specifying "handcuffed" and with a "perp walk."
A bit later in the show, Cross raised the possibility that Trump might be "trafficking" nuclear secrets to the Saudis or the Russians. Her guest, Andy Weber, a former Department of Defense official, said that Putin would be the most obvious recipient of the info.
CROSS: And I'm just curious from you, Andy: who on the world stage would have the most to gain from this information? I mean you think about Donald Trump's relationships with the Saudis, his relationships with the Russians, and the fact that he really appears to have no allegiance to America. He has allegiance to his sycophants, but certainly not to this democracy.
If someone were to ask you, who stands the most to gain from this information? Give me a guess of who who that might be?
WEBER: Well, we don't know what information was in these documents. But my best guess would be, President Putin would stand the most to gain, to having access to our most classified nuclear weapons information.
CROSS: Which is a frightening thought, Glenn. So given that. That this could really be a situation where you're a traitor! He is actually a traitor to America.
Cross wanted to know what the punishment would be. MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said that under the statute cited in the warrant for the search-not-a-raid of Mar-a-Lago, Trump could be looking at 10 years.
But that statute only relates to gathering, transmitting, or losing national security or national defense information. If Trump were actually convicted of being a "traitor," i.e., of committing treason, the punishment under federal law includes "death."
But would even that be sufficient to satisfy Cross? After all, federal executions are performed via a mundane and relatively painless lethal injection.
Might Cross lobby for the statute to be amended to subject Trump to, say, medieval England's punishment for treason: drawing and quartering? Or why not public stoning, with Tiffany getting to throw out the first ball, so to speak?
PS: Good news for Cross—an ex-CIA chief favors executing leakers of nuke secrets!
On her MSNBC show, Tiffany Cross surmising that Donald Trump could be a "traitor" for "trafficking" information on nuclear weapons to people such as Putin was sponsored in part by 4Imprint.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Cross Connection
8/13/22
10:10 am EDTTIFFANY CROSS: Honestly, when you come to the legal aspect of all of this, I think a lot of people, Roland, want to show the difference in this country. The difference in the justice system that many people navigate. I think a lot of people do want to see you know, Donald Trump, you know, handcuffed like an episode of COPS --
ROLAND MARTIN: Of course.
CROSS: -- and walking out.
MARTIN: Perp walk.
CROSS: -- we want to see a perp walk, Donald Trump, and we might see that.
MARTIN: It may happen in Georgia with [Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.
. . .CROSS: So as we mentioned, the Washington Post may have had the scariest headline about the Mar-a-Lago search this week, and that's that the paper reported the FBI was looking for missing documents related to nuclear weapons. Now, that's according to people familiar with the investigation. Again, NBC News has not confirmed that. And of course,, Donald Trump has denied it.
But if it were true, it leads to a whole set of new questions. So I have some right now for our guests. Joining me is Andy Weber. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risk. He's also a formere assistant secretary for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs. And, the great Glenn Kirschner is still staying with us as.
Andy, I do want to get started with you, because material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive, and usually restricted to a small number of government officials. How exactly is it possible that they were even allowed to be handled so recklessly? And what could Trump have been doing with these documents? Like, who stands to gain? What, what, what would he be doing, taking these documents out of the White House?
ANDY WEBER: It's incredible. And these are our nation's most precious secrets. And the fact that he took them to his private residence, out of the White House, out of control, in an unsecured environment, protected apparently by padlock—it's just extraordinary.
I was the classifying authority for Department of Defense nuclear weapons information. And the release of this information, this top secret, compartmented information, by definition would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.
CROSS: Indeed it would. And I'm just curious from you, Andy: who on the world stage would have the most to gain from this information? I mean you think about Donald Trump's relationships with the Saudis, his relationships with the Russians, and the fact that he really appears to have no allegiance to America. He has allegiance to his sycophants, but certainly not to this democracy.
If someone were to ask you, who stands the most to gain from this information? Give me a guess of who who that might be?
WEBER: Well, we don't know what information was in these documents. But my best guess would be, President Putin would stand the most to gain, to having access to our most classified nuclear weapons information.
CROSS: Which is a frightening thought, Glenn. So given that. That this could really be a situation where you're a traitor! He is actually a traitor to America. What might the punishment, if it is confirmed that he was trafficking our information around nuclear weapons, which is a huge deal, what might the punishment for something like that be? How would the DoJ go about prosecuting something like that?
GLENN KIRSCHNER: Well, the punishment, under the statute that is cited in the search warrant materials, it's a ten-year federal felony. A violation of 793, which is gathering, transmitting, or losing national security or national defense information.
