Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) shut down NBC anchor Kristen Welker’s defense of Joe Biden’s weaponized Justice Department on Sunday, arguing there must be “accountability” for its “abuses” against political rivals.
The “Meet the Press” host tried to spin President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for U.S. Attorney General as evidence the Trump administration is preparing to abuse its authority to persecute Democrats.
“Bondi has vowed to ‘investigate the investigators,’ to ‘prosecute the prosecutors,’ a different tone than you have struck, Senator,” Welker told Schmitt. “You’ve said the DOJ should be ‘going back to fighting crime and not settling political scores.’ How do you square those two different views?”
🚨NEW: Sen. Eric Schmitt educates NBC’s Kristen Welker on Biden’s weaponized DOJ, and Trump AG pick Pam Bondi’s role in holding those responsible to account:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 24, 2024
“There has to be accountability for these kinds of abuses."
100%. Schmitt rattles off some those abuses::
SCHMITT:… pic.twitter.com/9pdzOPXX9g
Schmitt described Bondi as a “very serious person” who witnessed the weaponization of the DOJ firsthand under Joe Biden before rattling off several instances of the DOJ’s political persecution against Christians, conservative parents, and even Trump himself.
“Everybody’s seen this weaponization of the Justice Department over the last four years. It really is a tragedy for a once respected agency that has gone after Catholics. It’s gone after parents who showed up to school board meetings under the auspices of the Patriot Act — this is in the United States of America,” Schmitt explained.
“And then clearly weaponized that department, Joe Biden did, and Merrick Garland, to go after their chief political opponent. And I’ll tell you Kristen, the arc of that story is really terrifying if you care about the Republic. After the midterms, Joe Biden said that there was no way President Trump would ever be back in the White House. After that speech, the zombie cases were resurrected.”
“The number three person from DOJ went to New York, and you had the Alvin Bragg case,” he continued. “The number two prosecutor in Atlanta went to the white House and coordinated. You saw all these cases resurrected. They all fell apart under the weight of the law. And so I do think there needs to be accountability. I think that getting it back to crime-fighting is important. But there has to be accountability for these kinds of abuses.”
Welker then asked if that “accountability” would amount to mass arrests of DOJ officials like Special Counsel Jack Smith, who spearheaded the now-tossed “classified documents” case against Trump as well as the January 6 “insurrection” case.
“Accountability means, first and foremost, the people involved in this should be fired immediately,” Schmitt said. “And anybody part of this, 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 ‘threat to democracy,’ was wrong.”
“And so we’ll see where that goes. You can’t have the Justice Department abused in this way,” he said, adding Bondi as AG will “restore respect” to the DOJ.
Watch the full interview: