Fox's Mollie Hemingway: The Russia investigation is a “fishing expedition,” and takes a “very Stalinist-type approach to criminal justice”

Hemingway: Mueller's indictments suggest that “political enemies are upset that Donald Trump won and they're going to use the power of the state to go after people”

From the November 30 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

Video file

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): So, Mollie, here’s what [Rep.] Adam Schiff, the antagonist -- the protagonist here against the president, says, “If the president and his associates were being untruthful in real-time as they were pursuing this deal, what does it mean now about how much we can rely on what the president is saying about any continuing Russian financial interest?” What do you say to that? 

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY (THE FEDERALIST): Well, I mean, if someone has evidence of something wrong, then they should bring that forward. But, in this country, we don't decide that someone’s guilty and then go on a fishing expedition until we find something that they did. And again, it's not that Donald Trump is a businessman that we need to find out. We already knew that, we knew he's a global businessman. What was alleged was treasonous collusion, and not just this guy is someone we don't like so we're going to punish him and anyone who worked with him. That's a very, you know, Stalinist-type approach to criminal justice. It's not how we're supposed to do things in this country.

And also, Adam Schiff did something that I thought was inappropriate that people didn't point out, which is he said something about how the special counsel should handle the investigation -- every time anyone on the right says anything about what the special counsel should do, we're told that this is obstruction of justice. Adam Schiff came out and said that the special counsel needed to sit down and do an in-person interview with Trump. Nobody said anything about that even though he's the incoming head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. So he should be careful when he's talking. 

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Well, on that note, Michael Cohen pleads guilty and he thinks it's going to help him because it's going to make the president look bad. And to your point, the left, the media just goes wild and they're saying that the president needs to step down today. But if there was nothing illegal here, if the president, no matter if they were still talking about it in the summer during 2016, and the date did change, if there’s nothing illegal, how -- why would Michael Cohen do this? 

HEMINGWAY: I don't actually understand why he thought he needed to lie. I mean, I understand that this really is a very political investigation and that makes people nervous, rightly so. But, you know, you should always make sure that when you're under oath you are telling the truth. But, all of these things that we’ve seen, almost everything related to the Mueller probe has either been a process crime, which is just not the standard that we should be demanding for something like this, or deals with stuff that was well before the campaign, you know, tax evasion from many, many years ago. And that's something you just want to be so careful about because it gives the impression that what's happening with this probe is that political enemies are upset that Donald Trump won and they're going to use the power of the state to go after people.

Previously

Fox's Jeanine Pirro runs defense for Trump, calling the Russia investigation a “fishing expedition”

Sean Hannity downplays FBI raid of Trump attorney Michael Cohen's office as a “fishing expedition”

Newt Gingrich: Russia investigation “is a very dangerous witch hunt that Mueller keeps expanding”