'That's a Justice Department official?' Trump ally's comments leave Morning Joe stunned
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough was gobsmacked by comments made on television by an official tapped by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate President Donald Trump's political rivals.
Department of Justice special attorney Ed Martin confirmed he was overseeing probes of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud, and the "Morning Joe" host was stunned by the official's conduct during an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.
"We're going to go to the very bottom of the facts, and if somebody did something wrong, we're not only going to hold them accountable," Martin said. "We're also going to look at everything else that they've been doing, because when you're a liar, you lie not just on one thing. When you're a cheater, you cheat not just on one thing. When you're doing corruption, you generally don't just do it on one thing, so we have – that's what we're asked to do as prosecutors, and that's what we're doing."
Scarborough could hardly believe his ears after the video clip aired.
"Wait wait wait wait – that's a Justice Department official?" Scarborough said, and co-host Jonathan Lemire confirmed he was. "Wait, I'm sorry – that's a Justice Department official? It's a rhetorical question. I mean, the fact that you have a Justice Department official ranting like that, I mean, yeah, you talk about breaking every political and constitutional norm. That's just outrageous."
Lemire pointed out that Martin had been spotted in Brooklyn recently scoping out James' home, and he said the special attorney was overseeing probes of other Trump critics that were being carried out by a Republican attorney who has champing at the bit for three years to investigate prominent Democrats and law enforcement officials.
"Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer and former legal counsel to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, has pushed for federal criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and senior FBI, CIA and Justice Department officials," Lemire said. "Now, a series of recent investigations approved by Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests to Davis that his long-sought goal is most likely approaching ... I mean, every norm shattered there, from what we've heard from from Mr. Martin, but you're suggesting might be the tip of the iceberg."
NBC News correspondent David Rohde discussed his new reporting on the investigations, saying that Davis and a newly confirmed federal prosecutor were looking into the use of a broadly defined statute to single out Trump's enemies for possible prosecution.
"So Mike Davis is very influential in Trump circles, and he has been calling for these sweeping investigations of the last two Democratic presidents and the last Democratic nominee for ages," Rohde said. "He sees this Ed Martin probe of Schiff and James as a sign on the right direction, and what he told me, too, is that there's a brand-new U.S. attorney, just confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, in Miami. He's publicly calling, this is Mike Davis, for a grand jury investigation. They're using this very broad charge, denial of rights. That's one of the charges against Letitia James, and this is an ongoing investigation that's already started, that her criminal – sorry, her civil investigations of Trump, that he overvalued his properties, which a judge ruled was correct and ordered him to pay $500 million in fines."
"They want to use that same broad investigation to say that Jack Smith or Barack Obama violated Donald Trump's civil rights," Rohde added, "and that would be a grand jury out of Miami, because it's Port Saint Lucie, the Saint Lucie County [that] Trump won, right. So the idea is it's maybe a friendlier jury pool and the sort of broader interesting thing, and what you said about the way Ed Martin was speaking, the after Watergate, after [J. Edgar] Hoover's abuses, where you just had a weaponized FBI and DOJ, the American people made all these reforms in the 1970s to have Justice Department prosecutors not say things like that in public, not smear people, not talk about investigations, present evidence in court, and don't abuse the power of the DOJ to sort of smear people like that, and all of this is it appears to be changing right now."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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