President-elect Donald Trump's plans for the Department of Justice (DOJ) are reportedly going to include a mix of retribution and historical revisionism, according to a new report.
The Washington Post reported Friday evening that Trump is planning to not only fire special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors, but will also deputize "investigative teams" that will "hunt for evidence in battleground states that fraud tainted the 2020 election." One swing state election official insisted that the Trump DOJ is free to conduct any investigation they see fit, but asserted they won't find anything of value.
"Since there’s no malfeasance, we will certainly work with anyone who wants to investigate our work,” Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told the Post. “But we will expect them to act with integrity and go where the facts — not their agendas — will lead.”
Various legal experts and commentators are cautioning that Trump using the DOJ to bolster his false claims of election fraud in 2020 will set a dangerous precedent and waste taxpayer resources. Writer Charles Johnson opined: "Getting away with treason and many other crimes isn’t good enough. He also needs to hurt anyone who failed to pledge fealty to him in any way, starting with the ones who investigated his crimes."
"Trump is going to spend an insane amount of DOJ money and resources trying to manufacture evidence that he won the 2020 election," journalist and author Radley Balko wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.
Roosevelt Institute economist Stephen Nuñez sarcastically wrote that he "can't wait for the DOJ report that states that Trump totally won the 2020 election and Democrats engineered a coup." Revolving Door Project director Jeff Hauser responded to the Post's report by saying it "ritualistic stupidity" for anyone to suggest that Trump's campaign bluster was "hyperbole."
"He is what most alarmist people say he is," Hauser added.