It has been a while since I’ve thought about John Ashcroft. But on Thursday, the former Attorney General wandered back onto Capitol Hill for the confirmation hearings of Todd Blanche for Attorney General and Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence and gave a brutal lesson to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who tried so hard to bait the 84-year-old Ashcroft into condemning Donald Trump for supposedly siccing the Justice Department on his political enemies. It did not go the way Schiff hoped.
"Mr. Blanche has said that he believes the president has both the right and the duty to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies," Schiff said, before turning to Ashcroft and asking, "Do you subscribe to that view?"
It was a trap dressed up as a question, and Ashcroft didn’t fall for it.
"I believe that the Attorney General of the United States has the right and responsibility to enforce the law uniformly, and if the law has been broken by the president's 'enemies,' he has a duty," Ashcroft said, adding that lawbreakers "do not become exempt from following the law merely by their enmity to the president of the United States."
Then he flipped the script entirely. "As a matter of fact, the people who break the law are in enmity with the people of the United States," Ashcroft said. "We used to call people who break the law, 'public enemies.'"
In other words, contrary to what the Democrats believe right now, the president's enemies aren't a protected class. If you don’t want to be investigated for breaking the law, don’t break the law.
Schiff, visibly annoyed that his gotcha had failed, pressed on. "If you do have a problem with that, please say so," he demanded, apparently hoping a second attempt would land where the first one failed so miserably.
It didn't.
"I believe the president needs to be an advocate of strong law enforcement, and that includes enemies of his," Ashcroft answered, before adding, "If an enemy of the president goes out and conducts a violent crime, there's nothing wrong with the president calling the attorney general and saying, 'I hope you do something about this violent crime.'"
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft runs circles around @SenAdamSchiff: "I believe that the Attorney General of the United States has the right and responsibility to enforce the law uniformly, and if the law has been broken by the President’s 'enemies,' he has a duty. They do… pic.twitter.com/l9acE5P2qH
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 16, 2026
But the most absurd moment of Schiff's questioning wasn’t just when he accused Trump of going after his enemies, but when he claimed that no Democrat president had ever done so before.
"I don't remember any Democratic president calling the attorney general and saying you need to prosecute him. And you need to prosecute her, and you need to prosecute them, and you need to go after this organization. We have never seen that before, or anything like it, anything like it," he said.
.@SenAdamSchiff (D-CA) asks former AG Ashcroft if presidents can ask the AG to prosecute enemies:
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 16, 2026
Schiff: "If you do have a problem with that, please say so."
Ashcroft: "I believe the president needs to be an advocate of strong law enforcement and that includes enemies of his." pic.twitter.com/RlIZxyyfBo
Seriously? Barack Obama never spied on Donald Trump? Barack Obama never used the IRS to go after Tea Party groups? And how about Joe Biden? His Justice Department literally spent four years trying to put Trump in prison. Biden's DOJ went after mostly peaceful January 6 protesters with the fury of a man settling a personal vendetta, jailed pro-life grandmothers for the crime of praying outside abortion clinics, sent agents sniffing around Catholic churches, tapped the phone lines of political opponents, and had the FBI brand concerned parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. If that isn't a president weaponizing federal law enforcement against his enemies, nothing is.
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Schiff, of course, is no stranger to inventing realities that suit him. He peddled the Russia collusion hoax for years, using his position on the House Intelligence Committee to sell what were blatant lies. So yeah, his credibility on questions of justice and truth is basically zero, and Thursday's performance did nothing to fix that.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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