Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump told Newsmax on Tuesday that his conviction last week set "a terrible precedent," a consideration that gave him pause when opting against doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton years ago.
Trump joined "Greg Kelly Reports" for a wide-ranging interview and talked, in part, about last week's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York.
"It's a terrible precedent for our country. Does that mean the next president does it to them? That's really the question," Trump told Kelly.
As president-elect in November 2016, Trump decided against appointing a special prosecutor to further pursue Hillary Clinton's deleted emails and private email server in an effort to help her "heal."
"You know, I said on a recent show … when I'd mentioned Hillary's name, they'd all scream, 'Lock her up, lock her up,' and everybody got a kick out of it and all," Trump told Kelly. "And I said, 'Wouldn't it really be bad?' You know, with — like as an example — Hillary, with the hammering of her cell phones and all of the things she did, but wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state — think of it, the former secretary of state — but the president's wife into jail? Wouldn't that be a terrible thing?
"But they want to do it," Trump said of the left. "So, you know, it's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to, and it's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them.
"I got a lot of credit from a lot of people, and some people said I should have done it, but, you know, could have, would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country," Trump said about pursuing Clinton criminally.
"And now, whoever it may be, you're going to have to view it very much differently. This is a bad, bad road that they're leading us down to as a country."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.