(Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris claimed last week that former President Donald Trump will “weaponize” the Justice Department against “his political enemies” if elected in November.
Harris made the dangerous and divisive comment during an interview with NBC’s Peter Alexander a few days after President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. In the norm-violating speech, considered by many to be less an address to the nation and more a campaign event, Biden disparaged his “predecessor,” without naming Trump directly, more than a dozen times.
The vice president echoed Biden’s concerns, telling Alexander that voters would have to choose between “democracy” and tyranny this November.
“If you want to just look at the split screen to understand what’s at stake, on the one hand, you’ve got Joe Biden—someone who is competent, who has principles, who has accomplished more than many presidents even hope for,” she claimed. “And on the other side of that split screen, you’ve got the former president, who glorifies dictators and has said he’ll be a dictator on day one.”
Trump “has said that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies” and that “he’s proud of the fact that he had picked three members of the United States Supreme Court who took a constitutional right from the women of America to make decisions about their own body,” she continued.
The irony of Harris’s complaint was not lost on the Republican National Committee, which pointed out that Biden’s own Justice Department has targeted Trump by bringing charges against him for the mishandling of classified information and for his role in the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S Capitol—something that both Biden and Harris have likewise both made wildly exagerrated claims about in the past.
Kamala Harris claims President Trump will "weaponize the Department of Justice against his enemies" — which is exactly what the Biden administration is doing right now. pic.twitter.com/4uHDV9uj2Q
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 14, 2024
Harris was also asked during the NBC News interview whether she would agree to debate Trump’s eventual vice president pick.
She, like Biden, deflected and refused to confirm one way or the other.
“Peter, we just got through the State of the Union,” Harris responded. “And I’m just so excited about what we accomplished.”
