Former President Barack Obama faced pushback after he claimed that presidents shouldn’t use the Attorney General’s office to prosecute political enemies, with many pointing to the vicious lawfare campaign waged by him and his Democrat cohorts against President Donald Trump.
Obama made the remarks during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, debuting his new presidential center in Chicago.
“Now that you’re no longer in office, what powers do you believe the president should not have?” Colbert asked.
“There are a couple that I’ve followed even though they weren’t law, and we’re going to have to do some work to return to this basic norm, and we probably now have to codify it,” Obama responded.
“The White House shouldn’t be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants,” he said, to which the Late Show’s liberal audience applauded.
“The idea is that the attorney general is the people’s lawyer. It’s not the president’s consigliere,” he continued, adding, “Two of the core principles of a democracy — and we can survive a lot: bad policy, funky elections. There’s a bunch of stuff that we can overcome. We can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system, the awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation where whoever is in charge starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.”
Commenters on social media immediately put the ex-president in his place, highlighting how Obama via his former President Joe Biden and the Deep State weaponized the Justice Department against many in President Donald Trump’s orbit.
“Said without a hint of self-reflection. Beyond words,” one X user wrote, posting a collage of mugshots of several Trump associates indicted by Democrats in Fulton County, Georgia, ahead of the 2024 election
Said without a hint of self-reflection.
Beyond words. pic.twitter.com/YBVMI4z6Nx— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) May 6, 2026
“The Russia collusion hoax would like a word,” remarked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
pic.twitter.com/BHYu9iCwmI— Skeptical Stoic (@StoicSkeptic) May 6, 2026
Some pointed out that one of Obama’s attorney generals, Eric Holder, at one point described himself as the president’s “wing-man,” despite Obama’s claims that the AG should be “the people’s lawyer.”
Three comments:
Yeah, I'm sure Eric Holder, who called himself "Obama's wingman", never engaged in any prosecutions for Obama
Democrats always like to accuse Republicans of doing things they actually do themselves
And all that said, people who live in glass houses………— John Betts (@JohnFromCranber) May 6, 2026
Trump confidant and Republican operative Roger Stone also pushed back against Obama’s remarks, saying the president “has an absolute constitutional right” to direct his attorney general to prosecute, adding that previous presidents had done it, but that in Obama’s case it was “a fabrication.”
Actually, the president has an absolute constitutional right to do that as the chief law-enforcement officer of the country. Lincoln did it Franklin Roosevelt did it and it's obvious that Barack Obama did it, although in his case it was a fabrication.— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) May 6, 2026
Elsewhere in the interview, Obama attempted to shift the discussion to Republicans when asked about liberal vs far-left “leftist” factions in the Democrat Party, with Colbert pointing to Rep. AOC and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani as examples, sending the audience into wild applause.
Obama: "I'm worried about the Republican Party, not just the Democrat Party. When I was president, people would ask me, 'What change would you like to see in Washington?' I'd say, I'd love a loyal opposition. I'd love a Republican Party that was conservative in some ways,… pic.twitter.com/jRf8LJcked— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 6, 2026
Here’s the full interview:
