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.”
“So my view is that whether a person has been a political supporter or not of the President of the United States is not the determining factor regarding prosecution,” he continued. “It’s whether a person has violated the law, and in enforcing the law. The attorney general is carrying out the will expressed in the Congress.”
Schiff seemed surprised by his response, but tried to press further. Ashcroft doubled down.
“The President of the United States is the executive branch of the United States with whose charge it is to enforce the laws of the United States,” he added. “When the President of the United States asks that the laws be enforced, I don’t see that as consistent with his duties or responsibilities.”
The rebuke of Schiff was not the only time Ashcroft countered the left-wing narratives about the Trump administration’s personal use of the Justice Department.
Welch tried to trap Ashcroft into commenting on the Anti-Weaponization Fund, the now-defunct fund that was meant to provide some restitution to victims of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.
“Can you imagine serving as attorney general and having President Bush come to you and say — by the way, who paid you $9 million before you got to be attorney general to represent him in criminal actions … but then he said, ‘I’ve got an idea: We’re going to sue the federal government for $10 billion and you’re going to represent the IRS, and then why don’t you work out a settlement where there’s a $1.7 billion fund that I control?'” he said. “Would you see anything, like, odd about that?”
Ashcroft did not take the bait, simply stating, “I didn’t have that situation. I didn’t have a president that had been the subject of illegal disclosure of his activities — criminal disclosure.”
Fighting over Welch attempting to interrupt him, Ashcroft continued, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth that’s that’s a big challenge in an oath, and so I want to give my answer and not your answer.”