Trump has fought off criminal investigations by planting 'red lines' — but it may fail this time: Swalwell

Former President Donald Trump may have a propensity for skirting criminal investigations, but the former president’s luck may be running out.

That’s according to Democratic lawmaker and vocal Trump critic Eric Swalwell, who said Wednesday that special counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland are poised to go where Robert Mueller, among others investigating the former president, weren’t.

Trump’s “tactic of creating artificial red lines,” which stymied the Mueller probe, doesn’t appear to be having the same effect on Smith and Garland," Swalwell said on MSNBC's Reidout with Joy Reid on Wednesday night.

“We saw this in 2016 when he said the election was going to be rigged. And guess who was trying to rig the election? The Russians. What did that do to the Obama administration? It made them hold back on publicly calling out the Russians,” Swalwell said.

“During the Mueller investigation, Donald Trump said it would be a red line to look at his finances. and what ended up happening? Mueller held back on looking at his finances."

“And now, when it's so clear that this guy has got a trove of classified information that the department of justice wants to seek, Donald Trump is in the heads of FBI agents who are afraid that this would cross some Trump red line and that they would be called out."

Swalwell said the fear of consequences has led to investigators “letting him win and rewarding somebody's bad behavior because you're afraid of the backlash.”

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“Thank God Jack Smith and Merrick Garland and the team persisted because what did they ultimately find? Exactly what the evidence showed was going to be there, a trove of highly sensitive, classified documents."

Watch the segment below or at this link.

Eric Swalwell on Trump's "red lines"www.youtube.com