Businessman Joe Lonsdale said Saturday on CNN’s “Smerconish” that he believed there is “clearly weaponization” of the Justice Department against former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Anchor Michael Smerconish said, “My next guest co-authored this Wall Street Journal op-ed with Jeb Bush under the heading, Elon Musk and Donald Trump Cases Imperil the Rule of Law.”
He asked, “I’m curious your co-author, Jeb Bush is no fan of Donald Trump. Why did he feel compelled to weigh in on this?”
Lonsdale said, “I’ve never given Donald Trump a cent either. I love America. I’ve been a lot of businesses in this country. I love building, love investing here. And this is very scary. I see the government weaponized against my friend Elon Musk. Listen, I don’t love Donald Trump, but I was just with a bunch of my business friends who don’t love them either. All of them thanked me for writing this.”
He continued, “I don’t think Trump necessarily handled this perfectly. It’s not a $400,000,000 fine. It’s like basically what happens in these countries when you have a regime takeover that’s going after its enemies, as you weaponize it and you penalize people in ridiculous ways. This is an obvious example of that. This is why it’s scary to my friends who do business, who don’t even like Trump because it’s a $400,000,000 fine for something where there’s no victims is obviously a weaponization of government and everyone knows on its face. ”
Lonsdale added, “They know that penalizing that much in business is clearly weaponization.”
He concluded, “That’s not how the country is supposed to work.”
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