Various witnesses were called in to testify on the second day of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing.
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft was one of the witnesses who testified on Thursday morning on the second day of confirmation hearings for Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Todd Blanche.
John Ashcroft served as the US Attorney General under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Ashcroft also had a distinguished career in Missouri politics that spanned decades.
Democrat Senator Adam Schiff tried to bait Ashcroft into attacking Todd Blanche, but it failed miserably.
“Mr. Blanche has said he believes that the president has both the right and the duty to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies. Do you subscribe to that view?” Schiff asked Ashcroft.
84-year-old John Ashcroft buried Adam Schiff.
“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 and the Congress of the United States, so we used to call people who break the law, ‘public enemies,’” Ashcroft added.
“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 said.
“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,” he added.
WATCH:
Todd Blanche sparred with Adam Schiff on Wednesday after the Democrat senator accused him of violating ethics rules.
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