Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Rep. Darrell Issa predicted that despite saying President-elect Donald Trump didn’t want to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue charges against his general election opponent Hillary Clinton for her alleged improprities involving her charitable foundation and her unauthorized email server while secretary of state, Trump would get out of the way and allow the FBI and his future attorney general make a determination on how to proceed with regards to Clinton.
“I think it’s important that the president do essentially what he does, which is get out of the business of prosecuting,” Issa said. “But at the same time he’s appointed or proposed appointing an attorney general who has a long record of doing his job. And so when we look at Jeff Sessions in concert with FBI and other organizations, they need to do their job, and I think that’s what the where the balance of the next president is going to come is reestablishing the independence of the Department of Justice. If he doesn’t do it, Congress will certainly push for that, but I think you are going to find a president who says let them do their job, stays out of it, and certainly doesn’t — you know, he hasn’t said she’s innocent. That’s a decision that needs to be made by the professionals.”
He accused President Barack Obama of “essentially jury tampering” by saying there was not proof of Clinton’s wrongdoing and went on to point to the Obama administration’s refusal to prosecute or take the case of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s before a grand jury as a lack of independence between the Justice Department and the president.
“I think that’s exactly right,” he added. “He said he didn’t have the evidence to prosecute. He said no prosecutor would. If he continues to do his job and if he finds the evidence necessary, this new Department of Justice is not going to have a bias from the top that the last one did. Remember, the last administration was sent an order by Congress to the U.S. attorney general in Washington, D.C. to prosecute or to bring before grand jury Lois Lerner and they simply refused to do it. It’s that kind of interference that the American people are tired of.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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