U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin in an exclusive interview with Michigan Chronicle said threats from the president won’t stop her from seeking accountability for members of the administration committing crimes.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday said Slotkin, “should be tried,” over comments about his administration.
“They want to go in and they want to frighten people,” Trump said. “She made a statement that was very, very dangerous.”
Slotkin, the first-term senator from Holly, said that potential investigations into the Trump Administration could discourage young professionals from accepting a job for the administration. Slotkin’s comments happened in Chicago University at an Oct. 13 recording of Vox’s “America, Actually” podcast with journalist Astead Herndon.
Conservative pundits and the president are painting Slotkin’s comments as criminal.
“And all I said, frankly, was that if you’ve done something illegal, if you’ve used the government inappropriately and against the law, you should be held accountable,” Slotkin told Michigan Chronicle at Wayne State University in Detroit Tuesday.
“I think about Kristi Noem, who used $200 million taxpayer dollars to have a friend make a political ad about her. Should that just be okay? Whoever hit send on those dollars, that’s not a legal act. So to me, I just think it’s about corruption, and their reaction is so strong and so overstated because they’re worried about accountability for illegal acts.”
In further comments on social media posted by the senator Tuesday, she dared the administration to arrest her.
“If the president wants to investigate and arrest me, and even worse, as so many authoritarian leaders do with their political adversaries, then do it,” Slotkin said in a video. “It’s gotten predictable at this point.”
Trump also took aim at the Michigan senator last year, when Slotkin told service members they have a legal duty to refuse unlawful orders, while Trump and his allies accused her of sedition.
Slotkin was in Detroit to headline a Michigan Black Business Alliance event at Wayne State. She spoke to a small crowd of local business and civic leaders in a conversation moderated by Charity Dean, the founder of the organization.
Toward the end of the event, Slotkin said she’s prepared for the Trump administration to attempt to change the outcome of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
A small group of U.S. national security officials are discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections, according to a Washington Post report this week.
“It’s not theoretical; leaders in this state sent a bunch of people down to Huntington Place to pound on the windows and try to interrupt the vote,” Slotkin said in an interview. “We’ve done a lot of work with the city, the state, at the federal level. “We’ve run tabletop exercises of different ways that the administration can try to interrupt the election. The thing I focus more on because of my background is the risk of sending federal law enforcement or uniformed military to the city and interrupting the vote, breaking the chain of custody on those votes. We’ve gotten the military leaders to say we have no expectation that we’re sending anybody. Like we’re trying to get them on the record ahead of the election, and I believe our elections will be free and fair.”