Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said Sunday that Justice Department staff who worked on the agency’s cases against President-elect Donald Trump “should be fired immediately.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Schmitt said the DOJ was “weaponized” against Trump during Joe Biden’s term, baselessly claiming that both the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland were trying to “go after their main political opponent to go’. ‘, echoing the president-elect’s frequent talking points.
“After the midterm elections, Joe Biden said there was no way President Trump would ever return to the White House,” Schmitt said. “After that speech, these zombie cases came back to life.”
“They all fell apart under the weight of the law. And so I think there needs to be accountability,” he continued.
NBC’s Kristen Welker then asked Schmitt to clarify whether he wants to see special counsel Jack Smith and Garland prosecuted.
“Well, no,” Schmitt replied. “I think accountability first and foremost means that the people involved in this should be fired immediately. And everyone who participated in this effort to keep President Trump off the ballot and throw him in jail for the rest of his life because they didn’t like his politics, and to continue to portray him as a threat to democracy without quotes , was wrong.”
Trump was prosecuted by the DOJ over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
Following Trump’s re-election, Smith has already taken steps to finalize both cases and is expected to file a letter explaining how he will do it by December 2.
Smith is also reportedly preparing to resign along with other members of his team ahead of Trump’s inauguration, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
However, the Washington Post indicated Friday that Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Smith, wants to fire everyone who worked on the cases against him at the DOJ, including career lawyers at the department. The president-elect also plans to use DOJ investigators to track down cases of fraud in the 2020 election in battleground states, according to the Post, despite there being no evidence to support such an investigation.
Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, said in December 2020 that the DOJ had not identified “fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”
Following former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) decision not to consider his name as Trump’s attorney general pick, President-elect announced Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, as his choice to head the DOJ.
“For too long, the partisan Justice Department has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – not anymore,” Trump said in a statement. “Pam will refocus the DOJ on its intended purpose: fighting crime and making America safe again.”
