Trump drops threat to pursue charges against Hillary
Bob Unruh/WND
President-elect Donald Trump will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton criminally, according to his former campaign manager.
He’s working now, she said, to address the major issues facing the U.S., and “things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them.”
In a statement to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Kellyanne Conway said, “I think when the president-elect, who’s also the head of your party now … tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content to the members.”
Conway is serving on Trump’s transition team in preparation for the Jan. 20 inauguration of the New York billionaire.
“And I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing,” Conway continued.
“Look, I think 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 aren’t among them,” she said.
Trump himself conceded Tuesday that he probably won’t make any moves to follow through on the campaign rhetoric to “lock her up.”
“It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about,” he said in an on-the-record discussion with reporters from the New York Times.
Trump cast his reversal as a unifying move and said he doesn’t expect his supporters to be “disappointed.” Trump also said he believes prosecuting Clinton “would be very, very divisive for the country.”
“I think I will explain it that we in many ways will save our country,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want to “hurt the Clintons.”
Trump did, however, suggest he wasn’t taking potential investigations into Clinton off the table.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been floated as a possible nominee for secretary of state or director of national intelligence, told reporters Tuesday inside Trump Tower that Trump’s decision not to appoint a special prosecutor will help “unite the nation.”
“Look, there’s a tradition in American politics that after you win an election, you sort of put things behind you,” Giuliani said. “If that’s the decision he reached, that’s perfectly consistent with sort of a historical pattern of things come up, you say a lot of things, even some bad things might happen, and then you can sort of put it behind you in order to unite the nation.”
Giuliani said he would also support efforts by congressional Republicans to continue investigating.
“I think the president-elect had a tough choice there, you could go either way,” he said. “If he made the choice to unite the nation, I think, all those people who didn’t vote against him, maybe, could take another look at him.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News there needs to be “a serious effort to see if the law was truly violated,” noting allegations that Bill and Hillary Clinton sold access while she was secretary of state to those who gave millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
There also is the issue of Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server while she was secretary of state, with FBI agents “ready to revolt” over Director James Comey’s “cowardly whitewash” of the matter.
One of Trump’s biggest supporters, columnist and author Ann Coulter, criticized the decision, tweeting: “Whoa! I thought we elected @realDonaldTrump president. Did we make him the FBI, & DOJ? His job is to pick those guys, not do their jobs.”
She further tweeted: “As happy as I am that our long national nightmare’s over, NO president shld be blocking investigators from doing their jobs.”
What do YOU think? Sound off on Trump dropping his threat to prosecute Hillary
Talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, a speaker at the Republican National Convention who has been floated as a possible Trump press secretary, tweeted: ”Well, he’s not even president yet, but it looks like @realDonaldTrump already pardoned a turkey for Thanksgiving.”
Pollster and Democratic strategist Pat Caddell told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Matt Boyle on Tuesday that he’s “not sure it’s a good idea” for Trump to forgo appointing a special prosecutor.
“I think we’ve got a division here,” said Caddell. “On the one hand not looking like a banana republic, throwing our opponents in jail. … But on the other hand, the rule of law here has been terribly abused.”
A Breitbart headline on Conway’s statement began with “BROKEN PROMISE.” Former Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon was Trump’s campaign CEO and will serve as chief White House strategist and counselor.
During the second presidential debate, Trump told Hillary Clinton that as president he would “instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”
Trump said he wanted to see Clinton investigated not as a political opponent but because she has blatantly violated U.S. espionage laws, mishandled top-secret information, destroyed government files and obstructed justice with her handling of classified information on a private server in her home while she was in office.
Even the left-leaning PolitiFact website confirmed 33,000 emails were deleted from Clinton’s unsecure private server three weeks after she received a congressional subpoena – an act that normally would result in a contempt-of-Congress charge.
Surveys showed 56 percent of Americans believe Hillary Clinton should have been indicted.
While legal experts such as Judge Andrew Napolitano were insisting “the evidence of her guilt is overwhelming” and “it was obviously a policy decision by the White House not to investigate her,” Trump was promising as president to appoint a special prosecutor to conduct a complete and fair investigation.
The London Daily Mail noted that “Lock her up!” became a rallying cry for Trump supporters at campaign events.
But the report also confirmed that Republicans on Capitol Hill have promised to spend “years” investigating Hillary Clinton.
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