Trump complains that bombing suspect will get 'outstanding lawyer'
Donald Trump. Photo by a katz / Shutterstock.com
Donald Trump complained at a campaign rally in Florida on Monday that bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami will get “amazing hospitalization” and “an outstanding lawyer.”
Rahami was shot and wounded in a shootout with police in Linden, New Jersey, on Monday and charged with five counts of attempting to murder a law enforcement officer, CNN reports. Publications covering Trump’s comments include NPR, the Huffington Post, Bloomberg News and the Hill.
Trump said Rahami will be taken care of by some of the best doctors in the world. “And he’ll probably even have room service, knowing the way our country is.”
“And on top of all that,” Trump continued, “he will be represented by an outstanding lawyer. His case will go through the various court systems for years and, in the end, people will forget and his punishment will not be what it once would have been. What a sad situation. We must have speedy, but fair trails and we must deliver a just and very harsh punishment to these people.”
Trump also said the government should “use whatever lawful methods are available to obtain information from the apprehended suspect to get information before it’s no longer timely.”
“And Congress should pass measures to ensure that foreign enemy combatants are treated as such,” Trump added. “These are enemies, these are combatants and we have to be tough we have to be strong.”
NPR questions whether a new law could be used to declare Rahami an enemy combatant because he is a U.S. citizen.
The New York Times has stories on Rahami’s background here and the investigation into the Saturday bombings in New York and New Jersey here. He was accused of stabbing a relative in the leg in 2014 and was arrested on weapons and aggravated assault charges. A grand jury declined to indict him after he reportedly spent three months in jail on the charges.
Rahami’s family ran a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that was the target of neighbor complaints for noisy customers who gathered there in the nighttime hours, according to the town’s mayor. The Rahami family filed a lawsuit in 2011 claiming they had been harassed by Elizabeth police and wrongly cited for keeping their business open past 10 p.m. The family members alleged a neighborhood resident complained about them because of anti-Muslim bias. The suit is pending.
