Schneiderman goes after Trump in City Hall speech
KINGSTON, N.Y. » State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman rallied anti-Trump activists with a speech Thursday evening to about 115 people at City Hall.
The Democrat’s speech was sponsored by Citizen Action of New York, a liberal community-organizing group with close ties to organized labor.
“After a massive series of setbacks, ... we’re called on to rise to this occasion,” Schneiderman said. “What’s very clear is that people here and people all across America clearly are fed up with the status quo from both the Democratic and Republican parties.”
Schneiderman’s first reference to President Donald Trump was as “former fraud offender,” based on Schneiderman’s prosecution of Trump University, which resulted in Trump agreeing to pay $25 million to former customers of a real estate course.
Schneiderman encouraged the audience to resist federal government policies set by the Trump administration, which came into office with a decisive Electoral College victory despite receiving nearly 2.9 million fewer votes than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“The first line of defense and the first line of progressive change in the Trump era really is to be active at the state level,” Schneiderman said. “State governors, attorneys general, legislatures are going to be tremendously important. So never take your eye off that ball as we move forward.”
He warned that existing environmental protections, human rights and health care programs are being dismantled.
“It is critical that the state of New York fills in where the federal government retreats,” Schneiderman said. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you are sitting around waiting for [U.S. Attorney General] Jeff Sessions to begin ... enforcing federal civil rights laws, you are going to be sitting for a long time.”
Schneiderman cited Trump’s inability to impose a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations as an example of poor leadership, as well as quickly showing the world how someone should not behave during court cases. He noted that during the second court case to stop the travel ban, Trump contradicted U.S. Department of Justice lawyers.
Schneiderman said the Trump administration does not respect the “rule of law,” and he promised to continue monitoring the effects of federal policy changes on New York.
“There is something about the total disregard for the rule of law that has really gotten the ire of lawyers all over America, and that includes the lawyers ... sitting as judges,” he said.
Schneiderman declined to take live questions from the audience or the press. A representative for Citizen Action of New York told the audience that the few questions asked during the event were selected in advance.