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Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), once on the shortlist to be attorney general under the incoming Trump administration, suggested Sunday that Justice Department employees who investigated the president-elect should be “fired immediately.”
Why it matters: President-elect Trump’s victory has marked a major fork in the road for his ongoing legal cases and could prompt vast changes at the DOJ, which Trump and his allies often claim has been “weaponized.”
- The election presented a stark reality for the first convicted felon to win the presidency: victory meant a return to the White House — a loss could have meant time behind bars.
- But now, the DOJ is facing a looming dramatic upheaval, with special counsel Jack Smith and his team in the spotlight. Trump has vowed to fire Smith within “two seconds” of his return.
Driving the news: Schmitt, the former Missouri attorney general, suggested that one of Trump’s first priorities should be firing those “involved” in the cases against him in a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
- “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,” he added.
Between the lines: Trump, throughout his 2024 campaign, publicly suggested he would seek retribution against political opponents.
- Top supporters of the president-elect want him to investigate, prosecute and perhaps even try to imprison Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Axios’ Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei reported earlier this year.
- Though Bragg won Trump’s historic conviction in his New York hush money case, Trump’s sentencing has been indefinitely postponed, granting a huge legal win to the next commander-in-chief.
- Trump has also repeatedly attacked Smith, re-sharing a Truth Social post in August that said the special counsel “should be prosecuted for election interference & prosecutorial misconduct.”
Catch up quick: Smith, who led two federal criminal cases against Trump, is also working to wind down his prosecutions.
- U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan accepted a request from Smith to pause proceedings in his federal Jan. 6 case earlier this month.
- Smith also moved to pause his appeal in Trump’s classified documents case, dismissed this summer by Judge Aileen Cannon on the grounds Smith was unlawfully appointed.
- The DOJ has a longstanding policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted, which means Trump will likely not suffer legal consequences after his consequential win.
Zoom in: Schmitt contended Trump’s cases “fell apart under the weight of the law,” and that there “needs to be accountability” for those who brought the legal cases against the president-elect.
- He continued: “I think that getting it back to crime fighting is important, but there has to be accountability for these kinds of abuses.”
Go deeper: Exclusive: Jim Jordan doubts Trump DOJ will pursue Biden