Sen. Chris Coons: Trump ‘Clearly Going After the Rule of Law’

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) claimed in an interview with CNN’s New Day Monday that President Donald Trump is “clearly going after the rule of law” when criticizing the FBI’s raid of longtime lawyer Michael Cohen’s office.

A partial transcript is as follows: 

ALISYN CAMEROTA: I know there are a lot of things that the president tweets that have Democrats’ hair on fire or the media…he’s talking about the Fourth Amendment. When you have a warrant, of course, it is legal to go into a suspected criminal’s office or home and do a search and seizure. And I’m just wondering, what you and even your Republican colleagues behind the scenes, in the halls of Congress, say when he goes after the criminal justice system.

SEN. CHRIS COONS: The president is clearly going after the rule of law and our criminal justice system and he’s undermining it. For the millions of people who follow closely what President Trump has to say on Twitter every day, the idea that the FBI broke into his attorney’s office, runs right up against the foundation of our law, which is, the FBI was executing a duly authorized warrant. So law enforcement, federal, state, local law enforcement doesn’t just break into people’s offices. They were executing a warrant issued with the approval of a judge. This is part of how investigations work. His use of the term ‘rat’ for Michael Cohen and mischaracterizing this as a break into his attorney’s office, frankly makes him sound like a mob boss than the president of the United States.

CAMEROTA: The FBI has to do lots of search warrants. Do you think that it has some sort of pernicious effect?

COONS: This is not good. This is not healthy for law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn’t want to be dragged into partisan politics. They are just going to keep doing there job. I’m the co-chair of the Law Enforcement Caucus in the Senate. I have tremendous respect for federal law enforcement has to do each and every day. This is just another disheartening chapter in the president’s attempts to mislead the American people about Mueller investigation.