Trump biographer David Cay Johnston nails Trump for wanting to make 'flipping' illegal: 'He ratted people out'

In a Fox & Friends interview broadcasted in full on Thursday morning, Donald Trump claimed he wanted to outlaw "flipping" — but as one of his biographers noted, the president himself has probably been guilty of it himself.

"When he was caught involved in sales tax cheating, [Trump] went to the authorities very quickly and turned in other people," biographer David Cay Johnston told CNN's Ana Cabrera.

Though the investigative journalist doesn't "have absolutely perfect evidence," it's likely that "in two of the four federal grand juries he beat, he ratted out other people."

In the interview with Fox News, Trump claimed to "know all about flipping."

"For 30, 40 years, I have been watching flippers," he told Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt. "Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go."

Like other pundits observed following Trump's comment, Johnston noted that the president sounded like a "crime boss" in his description of the practice undertaken by former "fixer" Michael Cohen.

"Donald Trump is the third generation head of a white-collar criminal family," the biographer said. "He spent his entire life, which I document in my books, swindling people, cheating people, not paying people. He's been found by judges to have engaged in conspiracies to cheat people. He was tried twice civilly for income tax fraud, really egregious income tax fraud for which I think he should have been prosecuted." 

"It is, I believe, absolutely critical that the state of New York treat Donald Trump like any other citizen," Johnston said. "They investigate him, and I'm totally confident they will find evidence of numerous crimes and he should then be indicted and prosecuted."

Watch below, via CNN: