White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said unequivocally Monday that President Donald Trump believes “no one is above the law.”
She made the statement while responding to a question about Trump’s tweet last week railing against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the indictments against Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and his wife for campaign finance fraud and insider trading charges against Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).
Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked Sanders (at 30:00 in the video above) if the president was “really trying to suggest or outright saying that the Justice Department shouldn’t be investigating or prosecuting allies of the president if it might hurt his party’s political chances?”
Sanders responded: “The president thinks no one is above the law. What he would like to see is a fair playing field ... there have been a number of concerns raised about individuals both in the FBI and the Department of Justice that have been ignored, and we would like to see those looked at as well.”
Besides slamming Sessions in his tweet over Hunter and Collins, Trump and his attorneys have long argued that the president himself is above a number of laws. He has insisted he has the absolute right to shut down any federal investigation, even into his own actions, so it’s therefore impossible for him to break the law by obstructing justice.
Trump has also said that the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution does not apply to him. The clause bars a federal officeholder from receiving money from foreign interests, as Trump does in his businesses. A federal judge ruled in July that an Emoluments Clause case against Trump can proceed.
Karl also asked earlier if the president “really thinks the federal government should contemplate action” against The New York Times for publishing the anonymous op-ed revealing an “internal resistance” of people around Trump who are trying to protect the nation from the president. Sanders said the issue is that someone may be “actively trying to undermine” Trump.
Sanders also told CBS News White House correspondent Weija Jiang that she would certainly keep the reporter “posted” on any move by the White House to sue Bob Woodward over his book Fear: Trump in the White House.
You can watch the entire press briefing in the video above.
