Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Friday slammed a federal judge's decision to send former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to jail over a new witness-tampering indictment, telling Newsmax TV that "it's tyranny and it needs to be stopped."
"It was a one-and-a-half minute phone call that they're basing this on," DeLay, former Texas Republican congressman who was majority leader from 2003 to 2005, told "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman.
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"Putting him in jail for three months, without a hearing, without any trial over this — it's just a judge's opinion — this is outrageous.
"I don’t know Paul Manafort," he added. "I don't know if he's guilty or not, but I do know that in this country, you're innocent before proven guilty.
"This is what I've been talking about the corruption of prosecutors and the FBI," DeLay told Bachman. "It's not just at the leadership level.
"This whole notion, this whole process of destroying people — putting them in jail, bankrupting them — just to get them to flip on a target is outrageous.
"It's tyranny and it needs to be stopped," DeLay said. "This is one of the most egregious examples of it."
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