President Obama has already demonstrated a willingness to “use the instruments of power” to target his political opponents, so Loretta Lynch’s acknowledgment the Justice Department is exploring legal action against global warming skeptics isn’t surprising, Charles Krauthammer said tonight.

“We know that in principle it will do it and has done it,” Krauthammer said on Thursday’s Special Report.

Krauthammer also expounded on the strategy behind using the term “climate denier”:

The left already has won this argument just on the basis of syntax. Denial is used with the Holocaust. Holocaust is a historical fact; if you deny it, yes, you are doing something extraordinary. Climate change is a projection into the future. The idea that it is the equivalent of, say, consideration of the Holocaust is absurd, but the left has captured the language. So, you, first of all, call them deniers, the moral equivalent of Holocaust deniers and then you look to see if the Justice Department could find a way to go after them? As if the objective is to find them guilty of something, i.e., shut them up and to find a statute of some kind like RICO, under which you could do it.


If it does happen, Krauthammer said, ”It would be an impeachable action.”