FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Sen. Rand Paul Denounces Special Counsels, for Investigating ‘People, not Crimes’
Dec. 9, 2018 (EIRNS)—U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) today called for an end to “special counsel” investigations of U.S. elected officials and candidates for elected office in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Paul said there should not be any special counsels, because they don’t investigate a crime; they investigate people, and look for a crime, and for conspiracies they can add on.
Paul told host Chuck Todd:
“If a special prosecutor went after your life for the last 40 years, not you in particular, but anybody—I think they could dredge up accusations. So I’m absolutely against it, and I think it’s a miscarriage of justice and we should not be going after one person. And if we get this way, and if we’re going to prosecute people and put them in jail for campaign finance violations, we’re going to become a banana republic, where every President gets prosecuted, and everybody gets thrown in jail when they’re done with office.”
Todd began the interview asking,
“Based on these federal documents that you’ve seen from [former Trump attorney] Michael Cohen at this point, if he wasn’t President, do you think ‘Individual-1’ would have also been indicted along with Michael Cohen?”
Paul replied, by citing the Federal Election Commission’s ruling that former Presidential candidate John Edwards had not violated campaign finance laws by paying off his mistress. He continued:
“But I think it’s bigger than this. ... We have to decide whether or not really criminal penalties are the way we should approach campaign finance. We’ve over criminalized campaign finance.”
Paul later condemned the current use of conspiracy laws to bump up sentences. He offered the example of a drug dealer who asks his naive girlfriend to wire money for him. Prosecutors add “conspiracy” to her indictment, which adds 15-20 years to her sentence—“And now this woman’s in jail for life,” explained Paul.
Todd raised the question of Trump’s building a hotel in Moscow, to which Paul responded: “I don’t know what’s illegal about trying to build a hotel in Russia,” referring to the plans for Trump Tower Moscow in 2015. “The President was talking to the media openly about the deal in Russia in 2015....” But the special council is threatening Cohen with 20 years unless he “gives” them something on the President—
“this is prosecutorial abuse I think. And that’s why his [Cohen’s] story keeps shifting.... So really I think we’re trying to make and find a crime. This has been my overall complaint about having the special prosecutors, is that really they find a person, and they look for a crime.”
Asked if he would support William Barr for Attorney General, Paul said he objected to Barr’s support for total surveillance and expansion of the Patriot Act, but had not determined how he would vote.
