MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill said Monday that prosecuting former President Donald Trump or his family for any crimes they may have committed “would merely be following the instructions of Mitch McConnell.”
“Deadline: White House” host Nicolle Wallace asked McCaskill about the attorneys at the Department of Justice (DOJ) who removed themselves from cases they saw as political under the Trump administration, as well as what Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland’s task will be regarding workforce morale at the DOJ.
“Well, there’s a lot of muscle memory there. I mean, the ethos of a prosecutor is you don’t try your cases for political reasons, you don’t charge cases for political reasons, you don’t avoid charging cases for political reasons. You keep your head down. You do the investigation. You get the facts, you apply the law and you go forward. Sometimes that means no case. Sometimes it means a case.” McCaskill said.
“I think Merrick Garland is going to just reassure them they can all just go back to work and not look over their shoulder,” she continued.
Garland was announced as President Joe Biden’s pick to be Attorney General in January and has said he will not be “the president’s lawyer” but the “United States’ lawyer.”
McCaskill then mentioned that both Republican Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn spent a lot of time “worrying about the politicization of the DOJ” during Monday’s confirmation hearing for Garland. She noted that Garland was also asked if there would be “prosecutions of Trump and his family or Hunter Biden and his family.”
Hunter Biden is currently under investigation by the DOJ concerning his financials and foreign business deals. It is also still possible Trump could be investigated for criminal responsibility following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. (RELATED: ‘You Let Them Crackers Storm Your Capitol’: MSNBC’s Ari Melber Invokes Rapper Jay-Z To Condemn Capitol Rioters)
“I would remind everyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee that the highest-ranking Republican in the country asked for Trump to be investigated,” McCaskill continued. “No one should think that DOJ is going to avoid looking at all of the facts, and if they implicate Donald Trump, or there are other crimes that Donald Trump or his family committed, I would depend on Merrick Garland to call balls and strikes and bring the evidence forward. And that would not be politicizing DOJ, that would merely be following the instructions of Mitch McConnell.”
McCaskill was referring to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech following the acquittal of Trump in his Senate impeachment trial. McConnell had placed responsibility for the Capitol storming on Trump and hinted that he could be criminally liable for inciting the violence.