White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says President Joe Biden will not be weighing in on whether he believes former President Donald Trump should face criminal prosecution.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Psaki was asked how Biden believes Trump should be punished for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Psaki began by noting that “there was a process that worked its way through the Senate.” However, when asked if Biden would support a criminal prosecution, she said, “That will be up to the Department of Justice to determine.”
“We’re doing something new here, and there’s going to be an independent Justice Department to determine what any path forward in any investigation would look like,” she added.
When asked if Trump’s behavior would meet the bar for a criminal investigation, Psaki said, “I am not going to speculate on criminal prosecution from the White House podium. The president is committed to having an independent Justice Department that will make their own decisions about the path forward.”
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“That will be up to the Department of Justice to determine," @PressSec says when asked whether Biden supports criminal prosecution for former President Trump pic.twitter.com/YzH3gcKuwt
— Bloomberg Originals (@bbgoriginals) February 16, 2021
During the presidential campaign, Biden regularly accused Trump of trying to weaponize the Justice Department to hurt his political opponents while helping his political allies, as IJR reported.
“This has been the most corrupt administration in modern American history. The Justice Department has turned into the president’s private law firm,” Biden told supporters in September.
He added that he would appoint an attorney general who “understood his oath of office … that in fact could do and move on what the professionals in the department thought had to be pursued, without my interfering.”
He also vowed, “I’m not going to prosecute anybody. I’m going to do what the Justice Department says should be done.”
He has personally said he believes a criminal prosecution of a former president would be “probably not very … good for democracy” but that he would not intervene to stop it either.
“If [a case] prove[s] to be a criminal offense, then, in fact, that would be up to the attorney general to decide whether he or she wanted to proceed with it. I am not going to make that individual judgment,” he explained.