Even though President-elect Donald Trump no longer wants to pursue prosecution against Hillary Clinton for either her private email server or for activities surrounding the Clinton Foundation, that doesn't mean her legal woes are over, former Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday.
"I would hasten to mention though that it's pretty well-known that there are a number of other investigations regarding the Clinton Foundation," Ashcroft, who served under President George W. Bush, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Bill Hemmer.
"I don't think that what the president-elect has said would foreclose following those investigations to an appropriate conclusion," he continued, "and if they found that there was some sort of a prosecution or legal action that was merited there, I don't think that what has been said today would foreclose action on those issues."
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway confirmed an MSNBC "Morning Joe" report that Trump wouldn't pursue the prosecution, following months of telling supporters at rallies he would do just that, leading to the often repeated chant of "lock her up" in response.
"When the president-elect tells you he doesn't wish to pursue the charges, it sends a strong message," Conway told the program. "He's thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them."
Trump himself also addressed the report during a meeting with reporters and editors at The New York Times Tuesday afternoon, commenting that he doesn't "want to hurt the Clintons, I really don't. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways."
Ashcroft also on Tuesday commented on the choice of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, saying that he will "support the rule of law and to do it equally for all citizens."
"Well he does it by enforcing the law equitably and equally, for all citizens and he doesn't pick and choose between categories of law with which the administration might not be pleased," said Ashcroft. "We accept the law as enacted by the Congress, signed by previous presidents and if the law is to be changed it ought to be changed by the Congress in conjunction with the signature of a president or a veto override of the president."
President Barack Obama's executive orders, though, went against that, said Ashcroft, but Sessions does not stand for such suspensions of the rules of law.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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