Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said President Donald Trump’s pressure on the Department of Justice to bring charges against New York AG Letitia James was the “path to a dictatorship.”
Host Dana Bash said, “You are the top-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate. What is your reaction to the president’s new pressuring of his top Justice Department official? And what can you do about it?”
Schumer said, “I think it’s a real threat to democracy, Dana, you know, the Justice Department has always been a very, very strong civil service, no matter who was in charge, a Democrat or Republican. They went after law violators without fear or favor. What Trump is doing is he’s turning it. He’s firing anybody who doesn’t seem to be part of his acolytes. And he’s turning it into an instrument that goes after his enemies, whether they’re guilty or not. And most of them are not guilty at all. And that helps his friends. This is the path to a dictatorship. That’s what dictatorships do. It is so very, very frightening and damaging to our republic.”
He added, “This is our rule of law. This is fundamental to our democracy, and we cannot let it stand. And my belief is democrats, republicans and independents, everybody will object to this because it’s so against what our democracy is all about.”
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