Chuck Schumer blasts Trump’s “banana republic behavior”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., bashed President Trump Monday over his “demand” that the Department of Justice investigate whether his 2016 presidential campaign was improperly surveilled, and said it was an attempt by the president to discredit the ongoing investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“That he would issue such an absurd and abusive demand based on no evidence shows just how little regard the president has for the rule of law,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. “President Trump seems to have the terribly misguided view that the Department of Justice is there to protect his political interests and prosecute his enemies. Well, it’s not.”

“The president’s demand is a blatant abuse of executive power, an ill-informed, sloppy attempt to discredit the duly-constituted investigation led by the special counsel,” Schumer continued. “The president’s behavior is the kind of grossly autocratic behavior we’d expect in a banana republic, not a mature democracy. By now, we should all recognize that President Trump’s latest demand is just another example of another relentless campaign to distract from the serious wrongdoing being uncovered by the Russia probe.”