President-elect Joe Biden is weighing in on whether he would use the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate President Donald Trump once he is inaugurated in January of 2021.
NBC News’ Lester Holt asked Biden during an interview Tuesday evening, “Some Democrats want investigations to go forward against President Trump after he leaves office. Do you support that?”
Biden, however, said, “I will not do what this president does and use the Justice Department as my vehicle to insist that something happen.”
“There are a number of investigations that I’ve read about that are at a state level. There’s nothing at all I can or cannot do about that,” he continued, adding that he is focusing on “getting the American public back in a place where they have some certainty, some surety, some knowledge that they can make it.”
Biden previously reportedly told advisers in private that he does not want his administration to be used to investigate Trump as he is concerned it would further divide the U.S. One adviser said Biden is “going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them,” according to NBC News.
See Biden’s comments below (starting at 16:00):
On Nov. 17, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) called for the incoming Biden administration to investigate the entire Trump administration.
Pascrell said in a statement, “[The president] has attacked our elections and sought to throttle democracy. He was rightly impeached by the House of Representatives. He has engaged in treachery, in treason. He has all but given up on governing and protecting our nation and if he had a shred of dignity he would resign today.”
He added, “Failure to hold financial and political wrongdoing accountable in the past has invited greater malfeasance by bad actors. A repeat of those failures in 2021 further emboldens criminality by our national leaders and continues America down the path of lawlessness and authoritarianism. There must be accountability.”
Additionally, on Tuesday, Andrew Weissman, one of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors, penned an op-ed in The New York Times where he wrote, “As painful and hard as it may be for the country, I believe the next attorney general should investigate Mr. Trump and, if warranted, prosecute him for potential federal crimes.”
