No snitching on Trumpie

No snitching on Trumpie

by digby

The newest big thing for our law-and-order tough-on-crime president is complaining that prosecutors can use charges against lower-level criminal figures to elicit testimony against higher-level figures—and praising convicted fraud enthusiast Paul Manafort for resisting the tactic:

Trump elaborated on this stop-snitching message in an interview that aired Wednesday morning on Fox News:

“This whole thing about ‘flipping,’ they call it … they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed—it’s not fair. … It’s called flipping and it ought to almost be illegal.”

This is, of course, a common prosecutorial pratice in the American legal system and one which Trump no doubt fully supports when it's used against people of color and poor people. Trump is just a Mafia Don kvetching about his own people turning on him in order to save themselves. He demands loyalty but will stab one of his henchmen in the back on a moments notice if he needs to. And they know it.

Here's his top adviser on the subject a while back:

And today:

Sean Hannity tells Mueller probe witnesses who have information about crimes: “Don’t talk to the FBI” https://t.co/WpY0cTdb0X pic.twitter.com/2re0EdM9az
— Media Matters (@mmfa) December 5, 2018