DOJ Has A ‘Duty’ To Prosecute President’s ‘Political Enemies’ If They Broke The Law

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft ripped apart Democrats’ narrative that the Trump administration is using the Department of Justice as a personal office to prosecute “political enemies.”

Ashcroft was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of the nomination of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the permanent position when Democrats like Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., attempted to project their party’s Justice Department weaponization onto the Trump administration.

Schiff asked Ashcroft about Blanche allegedly stating “he believes the president has both the right and the duty to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.” While Blanche disputed that characterization of his comments Wednesday, Schiff asked Ashcroft if he agreed with Blanche.

“I believe that the Attorney General of the United States has the right and responsibility to enforce the law uniformly, and if the law has been broken by the president’s enemies, he has a duty,” Ashcroft said. “They do not become exempt from following the law merely by their enmity to the President of the United States. As a matter of fact, the people who break the law are in enmity with the people of the United States, whose expression of what is the law has been developed in this body in the Congress of the United States — we used to call people who break the law public enemies.”