Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday the Department of Justice must treat fairly its investigations into the handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden when he was vice president and the storage of documents, some deemed classified, by former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“Both these guys ought to be treated exactly the same way,” McConnell said in an interview on WHAS-AM in Louisville, Kentucky.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate each case. Still, the DOJ has been accused by many Republican lawmakers of a two-tier system of justice in their handling of the cases.
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., told Newsmax on Tuesday that Biden is getting "every benefit of the doubt" in how the DOJ conducted itself. The FBI made a highly publicized raid on Trump’s estate to retrieve documents securely held there, but with Biden, Meuser said they "just happen to be finding documents that were readily available for the last six years."
McConnell said Garland “did the right thing by having two special counsels.”
“What’s good for one candidate for president ought to be good for another one,” McConnell said.
It was a rare show of congeniality between McConnell and Trump, who have feuded since the Jan. 6, 2021, which McConnell blamed on the former president. Trump has frequently criticized McConnell and McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was Trump’s Transportation Secretary.
McConnell told radio host Terry Meiners he does not pay too much attention to what Trump says.
“Most of the time, no,” McConnell, who turns 81 on Feb. 20, said. “Look, I’ve got better things to do with my time than read the daily tweets and expressions of opinion, and I don’t spend any time thinking about it.”
When asked about his future — McConnell, who is not up for reelection until 2026, when he will be 84 — said, “I haven’t made a decision about that. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
He said the 2024 presidential race is “going to be wide open. There’s going to be a lot of competition and I hope we can nominate someone who can win.”
“One thing we know for sure is it won’t be dull,” McConnell said. “It hasn’t been dull the last five or six years. There will be quite a lot of drama."