CNN's Jeffery Toobin: Trump Attacked Sally Yates “Based On No Evidence”

Toobin: The President's Twitter Attack Is “Clearly An Attempt To Intimidate Her”

From the May 8 edition of CNN's At This Hour with Kate Bolduan:

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KATE BOLDUAN (HOST): I've got to ask Jeffrey Toobin one thing as we look forward to today and Sally Yates and her testimony, talking about the tweets that we heard. We had a tweet from the president about Michael Flynn and a tweet from the president about Sally Yates, saying that you should ask her under oath, as we see right here, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers after she explained it to the White House. I don't ask this flippantly. Is this witness tampering?
 
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I don't think it is criminal witness tampering. However, it's just a demonstration of how President Trump has changed the norms of what we expect for how presidents behave. He's the head of the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice investigates people for perjury. He is essentially saying in that tweet, she will lie about her contacts with the news media. I mean, it is a pretty incredible --
 
BOLDUAN: Or suggesting she was the one who leaked it, right?
 
TOOBIN: That's right, that they should ask her about it, and that she was involved in illegal leaking and then may lie about it today. It is just indicative of how differently Donald Trump behaves than any other president. The idea that a president would insinuate that a member, briefly, of his administration, a senior Justice Department official, a career prosecutor, was involved in illegal leaking based on no evidence, just as she was about to testify -- it's not witness tampering, but it's clearly an attempt to intimidate her and presidents just haven't done that kind of thing historically.

Related:

ABC: Donald Trump Tweets About Sally Yates Before Senate Hearing

Previously:

Right-Wing Media Urge A Great Bureaucratic Purge