CNN’s Toobin: Trump’s Huma/DOJ Tweet Calling for ‘What Happens in Authoritarian Countries’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst and New Yorker Staff Writer Jeffrey Toobin reacted to President Trump’s tweet about Huma Abedin and the DOJ by stating that the leader punishing their political enemies is what happens in an authoritarian country.

Toobin said, “I hope I don’t sound like the boy who cried wolf. Because, I mean, this is so far outside the principles and the norms of presidential behavior that we are in an outer space realm here. This is what happens in authoritarian countries, the leader uses the criminal justice system to punish his political enemies. That’s precisely what is being called for here. It hasn’t happened yet, Huma Abedin hasn’t been prosecuted. Jim Comey hasn’t been prosecuted. As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing that they could be prosecuted for. But the very idea that the president of the United States is calling on his Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies is something that is unprecedented since the Alien & Sedition Acts when John Adams was president. That’s where we are today.”

(h/t Mediaite)

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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