Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) on Sunday said staff at the Justice Department who worked on the cases the agency brought against President-elect Donald Trump “should be fired immediately.”
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Schmitt said the DOJ has been “weaponized” against Trump during Joe Biden’s time in office, baselessly claiming that both the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to “go after their chief political opponent,” echoing the president-elect frequent talking points.
“After the midterms Joe Biden said that there was no way President Trump would ever be back in the White House,” Schmitt said. “After that speech these zombie cases were resurrected.”
“They all fell apart under the weight of the law. And so I do 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 means first and foremost the people involved in this should be fired immediately. And anybody part of this effort to keep President Trump off the ballot and to throw him in jail for the rest of his life because they didn’t like his politics and to continue to cast him as a quote unquote threat to democracy was wrong.”
Trump was prosecuted by the DOJ over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result and for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
Following Trump’s reelection, Smith has already moved to wind down both cases and is expected to file briefs explaining how he will do by Dec. 2.
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Smith is also reportedly preparing to resign from his role along with other members of his team ahead of Trump’s inauguration, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
The Washington Post, though, on Friday indicated that Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Smith, wants to fire everyone who worked on the cases against him at the DOJ, including career attorneys at the department. The president-elect, according to the Post, also intends to use DOJ investigators to look for instances of fraud in the 2020 election in battleground states despite no evidence to support such a probe.
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 to withdraw his name from consideration as Trump’s attorney general pick, the president-elect announced Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, as his pick to lead the DOJ.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump said in a statement. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.”