Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) slammed President Trump for pressuring his Justice Department to investigate his political enemies, calling the move a “real threat” to the country’s democratic system.
“I think it’s a real threat to democracy,” Schumer said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “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 continued. “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,” Schumer added.
Schumer pledged to “fight” Trump’s pressure as “strongly as we can, in every way.”
“There are going to be legal ways to fight this. We will try to find legislative ways to fight this, but also the American people should let their representatives know how terrible this is to democracy. And we’ve seen conservatives speak out against this too, and we need our Republican colleagues more than ever to speak out against this violation of the fundamentals of democracy,” Schumer said.
Trump on Saturday demanded Attorney General Pam Bondi to action against his political foes — including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and former FBI Director James Comey — and complained that “nothing is being done.”
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that, “we can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”
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