Republican Ex-Justice Department Officials Alarmed by Trump’s Threat to Jail Clinton
Source: WSJ
Donald Trump’s threat to sic a special prosecutor on Hillary Clinton should he win the presidency has prompted a group of Republican former Justice Department officials to call for the GOP presidential nominee’s defeat in November.
“We believe that Donald Trump’s impulsive treatment, flair for controversy, vindictive approach to his opponents and alarming views outside the constitutional mainstream ill suit him to oversee the execution of the laws in a fair and evenhanded manner,” reads the letter, signed by about two dozen former officials who served under five Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. “None of us will vote for Mr. Trump and all believe he must be defeated at the polls.”
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The letter was organized by Donald Ayer, who served as deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush and Donald Baker, assistant attorney general for the antitrust division under Gerald Ford. One notable signer was former Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who, along with the late Attorney General Elliot Richardson, resigned in 1973 rather than carry out President Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in an episode known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
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The letter also condemns Mr. Trump for proposing to reinstitute waterboarding and inflict other forms of torture on enemy prisoners and to kill the families of terrorists, saying those demonstrates his “basic ignorance of the facts as well as the role of our legal system in the fight against terror.”
Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/10/11/republican-ex-justice-department-officials-alarmed-by-trumps-threat-to-jail-clinton/
Other signatures: G.W. Bush administration officials: former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and John Bellinger, a national-security counsel who later served as the State Department’s chief lawyer. Also cabinet secretaries, Michael Muksasey and Michael Chertoff, who also once served as federal judges.
Other signers included former acting Attorneys General Peter Keisler (George W. Bush) and Stuart Gerson (George H.W. Bush); former Deputy Attorney General Lowell Jensen (Ronald Reagan); former Solicitor General Charles Fried (Reagan); and former Associate Attorney General Wayne Budd (George H.W. Bush).
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