Donald Trump Says Hillary Clinton ‘Destroyed The Lives’ Of His Campaign Staffers Through Russia Investigation
Still stinging over the Russia investigation, Donald Trump turned to a familiar target to criticize for it — former rival Hillary Clinton.
In an interview with Sean Hannity this week, Trump claimed that his 2016 presidential race opponent “destroyed the lives” of campaign staffers in what appeared to be a reference to the Russia investigation. A number of Trump’s top campaign members and inner political circle were nabbed in the investigation, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort who was sentenced to years in prison for committing federal financial crimes.
As The Hill noted, Trump referred to the investigation as an attempt to have him thrown out of office and blamed Clinton for it.
“She’s destroyed the lives of people that were on our campaign,” Trump said.
“This was a coup. This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government… This was an overthrow, it’s a disgraceful thing,” he added.
As the report added, Trump has turned his attention back to Clinton after she publicly called him out in the wake of the Mueller report’s release, saying that he would have been indicted for obstruction of justice were he not the president. Clinton also pushed back against Trump’s claim that he was vindicated, noting that Mueller very intentionally left it up to Congress to decide whether he committed obstruction and should be impeached.
A growing number of Democrats have begun to call for impeachment proceedings against Trump, including many candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has been among the most vocal, saying she would support Trump’s impeachment.
Donald Trump has also pushed back against talk of his impeachment, saying he would appeal to the Supreme Court if any attempts were made to impeach him.
Donald Trump is now turning the lens back on his former political rival. In his interview with Hannity, Trump said that Attorney General William Barr is being forwarded the “incredible” and “big” allegation that Ukrainian-connected actors leaked information about Paul Manafort to Clinton’s campaign. Manafort was forced to abruptly leave Trump’s campaign with the public release of a “black ledger” that showed secret payments to Manafort, Fox News noted.
“I would imagine [Barr] would want to see this…. I would certainly defer to the attorney general, and we’ll see what he says about it,” Trump said. “He calls ’em straight.”
Trump wanted to fulfill campaign promise to "Lock Her Up." Tried 3xs to pressure Sessions into prosecuting Clinton. Episodes are unique because they show Trump going on offensive to target a rival. No president since Nixon is known to have attempted this. https://t.co/QFAYlYfj2a
— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) April 24, 2019
As the Mueller report noted, Trump had tried to press Attorney General Jeff Sessions into prosecuting Hillary Clinton, which Trump had promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to do.
