On Friday’s broadcast of CBS’ “Late Show,” 2020 presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said he’s “really ticked off about” the sentence received by Paul Manafort, and “this criminal justice system can’t surprise me anymore.”
Booker said, “[T]his news came out about Paul Manafort, and I’m really ticked off about this.”
He continued, “Well, one of my friends says that we have a criminal justice system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. There are people from neighborhoods like mine in America who get convictions for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted to doing. We are a nation right now that churns into our criminal justice system the most vulnerable people.”
Booker added that he isn’t surprised by Manafort’s sentence because “this criminal justice system can’t surprise me anymore.”
Booker further stated, “[H]e is somebody that did things that undermined this investigation. And so, everybody — that so delegitimizes our criminal justice system, that there are people in prison right now — I had a guy that went with me to the State of the Union Address…who was in jail for life for selling — for being in possession of crack cocaine weighing less than a baseball, less than a baseball, a life sentence. And here is a guy that betrayed our nation, that the prosecutors said — that the sentencing guidelines said over 19 years, and he’s getting out with a slap on the wrist. What does that say to people in communities like mine that have been disproportionately targeted by a drug war that’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on people?”
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