Senator Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT) is facing criticism after comments he made in response to the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Comey has been charged with mak­ing false state­ments and obstruc­tion in his con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny, accord­ing to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the East­ern Dis­trict of Vir­ginia.

Speak­ing in an MSNBC inter­view, Blu­men­thal expressed alarm at what he described as the politi­ciza­tion of the Jus­tice Depart­ment. Draw­ing from his own expe­ri­ence as a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Blu­men­thal warned that the institution’s cred­i­bil­i­ty was being under­mined.

“And the old say­ing, what comes around, goes around. Today it’s a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent, but degrad­ing the democ­ra­cy and ruin­ing, lit­er­al­ly per­vert­ing the great ethos and tra­di­tion of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, where I was in awe as I walked through those halls as a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor — I think it’s time for Repub­li­can col­leagues to say ‘enough is enough,’” Blu­men­thal said.

The sen­a­tor also pledged that Democ­rats would strong­ly oppose what he sees as par­ti­san tar­get­ing.

“We are going to push them and do it hard on the Sen­ate floor, pri­vate­ly, in the judi­cia­ry com­mit­tee,” he said.

How­ev­er, many crit­ics online quick­ly point­ed to recent his­to­ry, not­ing that for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and sev­er­al mem­bers of his admin­is­tra­tion had faced indict­ments and legal actions pur­sued under Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship before those cas­es were dropped fol­low­ing Trump’s return to office.

One com­men­ta­tor remarked, “They lit­er­al­ly indict­ed Trump. They hate when we beat them in their own game.” Anoth­er added, “That’s pret­ty fun­ny. Democ­rats arrest­ed Pres­i­dent Trump’s lawyers, they sent mem­bers of his cab­i­net to jail — they even arrest­ed his valet.”

Oth­ers framed Comey’s charges as part of a polit­i­cal cycle, with one post read­ing: “Do they not real­ize this is the com­ing back around part?”

Blu­men­thal, how­ev­er, argued that the issue tran­scends par­ti­san dis­putes and called on Repub­li­cans to resist efforts to fur­ther politi­cize pros­e­cu­tions.

“My col­leagues have to draw a line. My Repub­li­can col­leagues have to grow a spine here. For a decade, I have been wait­ing time after time — the Mueller Report, the impeach­ment tri­al, again and again — for Repub­li­cans to say it is a bridge too far,” Blu­men­thal said, accord­ing to the Dai­ly Caller.

He con­clud­ed by stress­ing the impor­tance of pre­serv­ing insti­tu­tion­al norms and the rule of law.

“We need to reserve basic norms, essen­tial rules that pro­tect all of us,” he said.