‘Nothing Wrong!’ Right-Wing Legal Star John Yoo Defends Trump Revenge Tour Prosecutions

Right-wing legal star and Bush administration alum John Yoo defended President Donald Trump’s ongoing revenge tour during a Tuesday afternoon appearance on Fox News.

Anchor Sandra Smith brought up the topic by playing a clip of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche responding to a question about how he would balance a promise to end the weaponization of the Department of Justice with Trump’s desire to see his enemies prosecuted.

In the clip, Blanche said:

When you talk about weaponization, and it’s become a word that is supposedly a-, that when we talk about ending weaponization, as if that’s a bad thing for us to do, okay? People in this room, okay, people in the room for four years, some of you the same people, sat here with the last administration when you saw a weaponization of this department the likes of which had never been seen in history. And some of you are looking down now, and I get it. Because you had a president who was indicted four times by this department.

“You got the sense he was on a mission when he stepped up to that microphone, John,” mused Smith, prompting Yoo, who replied:

Yes, I mean, Todd was there for all of it, sitting right next to President Trump at the defense tables. You and I and John discussed many times the Justice Department crossed a red line in its persecution of President Trump. They indicted for the first time in American history a former president, and some of these cases seemed explicitly designed to drive President Trump off the ballot, prevent him from running for election, as was his right in 2024.

So I think what you have to ask — and I think this is what Blanche is thinking about, this is what Bondi’s thinking about — is how do we make sure that never happens again? It might unfortunately be the case that the only way to stop future Democrats from doing this again to future Republican presidents is to investigate the people who did it in the first place, to see if they broke any laws, to see if they followed their ethical obligations, because it doesn’t seem to me, anyway, that if this Justice Department just rolls over and doesn’t pursue these cases or at least conduct any investigation, there’s no deterrent to stop people from doing it again in the future. You heard, very emphatically, I thought this was really interesting that Todd Blanche says we will make sure these kinds of prosecutions will never happen again in future. And that means they’re gonna have to take some tough measures now to stop people from doing again.

“You mentioned the word persecution there, and there’s a lot of opponents of the president who believes that he’s going to task Todd Blanche to persecute the president’s enemies. Here’s what Blanche said about that,” replied John Roberts before rolling more tape from Blanche’s press conference earlier in the day:

…is changing this department. We’re no longer-, people say, “The president wants to go after his political enemies.” No, the president has said time and time again that he wants justice. And if you look at what happened to him, his family, his administration, the agents that protected him, people that happened to just walk by him on a given day, they got subjected to massive investigations by this department. So I understand the question and I understand the pretty constant role of the media that somehow this department is weaponizing itself, but it happens not to be true.

“So what do you think about that idea that Blanche floated out there that the president is just looking for justice here, he’s not looking for persecution?” inquired Roberts.

“It’s a really interesting question, John. It really goes to the delicate relationship between the president and the Justice Department, which other questioners at the press conference asked about, too. It is the president’s right to recommend cases and to direct the Justice Department. The Constitution only identifies the president himself with the role and duty of taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. Under our constitutional system, the attorney general and the Justice Department are the assistants to the president in carrying out that duty,” answered Yoo. “There’s nothing wrong with the president telling the attorney general, telling the Justice Department, ‘I think you should pursue these priorities.’ The problem is they got to do it well and not get these indictments thrown out of court.”

The Department of Justice has indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, and Trump’s own ex-national security adviser, John Bolton, in prosecutions that critics have argued were flimsy and politically motivated. The cases against James and Comey have already been thrown out. Prosecutors also sought to secure indictments against a group of lawmakers, including Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) after they released a video urging U.S. service and intelligence community members to refuse illegal orders, but a grand jury rejected the charges.

Watch above via Fox News.

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