President Joe Biden's Justice Department going after former President Donald Trump is a danger to American national security and democracy, according to former Trump administration acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Newsmax.
"This does look to me like an end of the republic type of situation: where the ruling party punishes the opposition party and takes out their leaders through abuse of prosecutorial power," Whitaker told "Saturday Report" host Rita Cosby. "And the question we have is: Are we now just winning elections and trying to win elections for more power?
"This next election in 2024 — and really the next decade of American history — is going to depend on a lot of statesmen and stateswomen actually doing what's in the best interests of all citizens, and not just what color jersey you're wearing.
"So, Rita, this is the time, in a moment of American history, that we all should be very keen to."
Whitaker said special counsel Jack Smith's use of the Espionage Act represents an abuse of the justice system, because alleged wrongdoing is absent of malice on behalf of Trump.
"Usually these cases are brought under the Espionage Act when you have somebody that's a spy or somebody that [is] trying to sell government secrets or someone that is otherwise a threat to our country," Whitaker told Cosby. "I don't think anybody thinks that Donald Trump was trying to use these documents to hurt our country.
"I mean, he believed — and I think important part of this case is that he believed — that these were part of his records from his administration and that he had every right to keep them."
A grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts, and Whitaker said the indictment is a political persecution of Biden's chief 2024 rival.
"If the name wasn't Trump — we've seen through the course of previous presidential transitions where no president was prosecuted for this crime, but here we are," Whitaker said, alleging Smith is trying to enhance his personal career, potentially stretching the law to take down Trump for Democrats and the Biden administration.
"This prosecutor seems to want to make their name permanent status in American history by taking down Donald Trump with a very aggressive, really untried legal theory," Whitaker added.
Going into the detail of the indictment, Whitaker said he sees a tough case to prove, particularly with the allegation of moving boxes of classified documents.
"The left-wing media is suggesting that all boxes were filled with documents he shouldn't have had," Whitaker said. "That's just not true. And, in fact, if you lay over the context that Donald Trump was writing his book of all the letters he's received ... in writing through the course of his career, that would make a lot of sense for somebody to want to take their personal records back and forth from their summer home to their winter home."
Ultimately, this indictment is a biased story written by an overzealous prosecutor, Whitaker concluded.
"Indictments are always a little challenging because they are the government's version of what happened in trying to paint their story, and I think there's a lot more to this story than Jack Smith [is] telling us right now," he said.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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