One longtime Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer who quit in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term is now shedding light on what he characterizes as the administration’s “playbook” for federal investigations.In a Tuesday segment with CNN host Erin Burnett, attorney Patrick Kent remarked on the Trump administration’s investigations into Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, arguing that his former bosses weren’t actually aiming to win a court case. He said the goal instead is to simply distract Americans from the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good.”They don’t want to talk about the horrible images that are constantly going over our screens. They want to distract,” he said. “And this is to distract and to intimidate. But ultimately, they don’t care if this leads to a successful prosecution or not. It’s about simply to demonize this community and to intimidate it.”Burnett pivoted to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s visit to Minnesota on Tuesday, and asked Kent if she was following that same strategy. Kent said she was, and that her appearance in the Gopher State “falls right into their playbook” of intimidation of political opponents.”It’s no coincidence that on the day that they enlarged the scope of subpoenas to the elected officials within the state of Minnesota, it’s to send a message,” he said. “It’s to send a message that, ‘understand this, that we have every level of the lever of the federal government at our disposal, and we have ICE, we have the FBI, we have the Department of Justice, and we are here.”Kent went on to argue that Trump had done “tremendous” and “long-lasting” damage to the DOJ, and that his dismantling of his former employer was “on two fronts.” One being at the institutional level — in which longtime prosecutors with decades of knowledge and experience were driven out — and the other in the form of a potentially permanent loss of credibility.”Look at the civil rights division, where I worked. Three quarters of the lawyers have left,” he said. “… And who have we been replaced by? Partisan ideologues … Nobody is going to trust the department of justice. So the damage? We’re not talking years. We’re talking decades.” – YouTube www.youtube.com
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