CNN’s Elie Honig Sounds Alarm on Trump’s ‘Retribution Tour’ Targeting ‘Private, Individual Citizens’
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s “retribution tour” on Thursday, arguing that two new executive orders signal that it’s entering a frightening new stage.
On Wednesday, Trump signed executive orders that not only stripped former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs and former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor of their security clearances, but ordered the Department of Justice to investigate them.
On Thursday morning, Kate Bolduan asked Honig, “What exactly do you think the president is saying there, that he wants to do or will do with respect to these two men?”
“Well, Kate, the retribution tour has now moved on from multi-billion dollar law firms, and universities, and media outlets, and now it’s targeting private individual citizens. If you look at these proclamations issued on formal letterhead yesterday by the White House, essentially what it does is a couple things. First of all, it strips security clearances not only from the targeted individuals, Krebs and Taylor, but also from the places where they work. Krebs works for a private cybersecurity firm. Miles Taylor works at the University of Pennsylvania. So it really threatens their livelihood,” answered the former federal prosecutor. “But the far more important thing that Donald Trump has done here is specifically ordered the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation based on scattershot accusations of things that are not in fact crimes. And I think that’s what really makes this particularly unusual and particularly dangerous.”
“Next move is the-, it’s up to the attorney general, Pam Bondi. I mean, is it appropriate for her to even to open a criminal investigation given what you just said?” followed up Bolduan.
“So longstanding DOJ policy and practice going back decades, says that prosecutors should not and cannot open an investigation for no reason, or certainly not for political or personal reasons. You have to have something called predication, which just means basically a kernel of information on which to believe some crime might have been committed,” replied Honig. “And again, you can look through those proclamations. You can listen to the president’s public statements. He said Chris Krebs is a, quote, ‘wise guy.’ Last time I checked, not a federal crime. He says that they are both dishonest actors, wrote anonymous books, are troublemakers, essentially. None of that’s a federal crime. So this I think will be another test of the attorney general’s independence.”
“The right thing to do here is just ignore this. I mean, Bill Barr, who I’ve criticized quite aggressively, did in fact ignore Donald Trump at times when he called for political prosecutions of his enemies. So we’ll see what Pam Bondi does here,” he continued. “She has not shown any real meaningful independence thus far. This will be another test.”
Watch above via CNN.
