Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer agreed with President-elect Donald Trump's decision this week to not pursue further investigations into Hillary Clinton, calling it the "right thing" and likening it to a presidential pardon.
"It's the right thing. Procedurally not quite," Krauthammer told Fox News' "Special Report" Tuesday. "This is the equivalent of him saying, issuing a pardon. And there a lot of people saying, 'What about justice here?' … You're saying some things for the country are more important.
"We don't want to see national political opponents putting each other in jail," Krauthammer said.
"So even though procedurally he's not supposed to say this because he's not the one who would decide, it's the equivalent of saying, 'When I'm sworn in, I would issue a pardon.' And that's, I think, the right thing to do," Krauthammer said.
Trump told The New York Times in his visit Tuesday that he would not pursue a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's use of a personal email server, walking back a campaign promise to do so.
"Lock her up" became a mantra of his and his supporters at rallies.
Trump "tends to say things provisionally. He says what he needs to say in the moment," Krauthammer said. "But in the end he tends to shift. What he believes about campaigning is, you say what's useful at the time and then later, you figure out how you want to govern."
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