Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) defended the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity last week, saying the justices “made clear what the law is.”
Rubio, one of former President Trump’s top candidates to be his running mate, said Trump is being politically targeted when questioned Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he was “comfortable” with the Supreme Court’s decision. He later appeared to support the high court ruling, which said presidents are granted broad immunity for official acts while in office.
“Well, first of all, I feel uncomfortable that we now have a president who is targeting political opponents. That’s what happened under Joe Biden’s administration,” Rubio said. “When Donald Trump was president, I can’t think of a single prominent Democrat who was harassed, persecuted, prosecuted.”
“It’s funny to me to read these people and hear them warning about all the horrible things they ridiculously claim Donald Trump will do if he becomes president again,” he added.
Rubio repeated a familiar argument from Trump and his allies who have suggested, without evidence, that President Biden is the driving force behind some of the former president’s legal troubles.
CNN’s Dana Bash dismissed Rubio’s statement, noting that the Justice Department has targeted Democrats under the Biden administration, including Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).
“Well, they only go after Democrats who don’t do everything the Democrats want them to do,” Rubio responded.
He then said the justices had just clarified existing law before reiterating that Trump and his allies are being targeted.
“And that is you cannot go after presidents for official acts, and there is a presumption of immunity for quasi-official acts or semi-official acts or exactly the terminology that they used, no — they were quite clear about that,” Rubio said. .
“Let’s see what their efforts are and what they did in the courts to persecute and prosecute Donald Trump, they tried to bankrupt him, they tried to silence him, they tried to arrest him, they persecuted his allies every day. single day,” he added.
Rubio is one of the former president’s vice-presidential candidates. Trump said he has chosen his running mate but has not yet made a formal announcement.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
