CNN’s Smerconish Butts Heads With GOP Rep Over Trump’s FBI Purge
CNN host Michael Smerconish went head-to-head with Florida Rep. Byron Donalds on Saturday over President Donald Trump’s Friday purge of FBI agents.
The Trump administration reportedly targeted agents who worked “at any time” on investigations into the Jan. 6 riots and on Trump’s classified documents case, which was dismissed.
Smerconish grilled Donalds over how the firings would have a “chilling impact” on those willing to come forward and report corruption.
As Smerconish put it, “Who in the world in the FBI is going to be willing to investigate any malfeasance alleged within this administration? People are going to say, ‘If I now pursue what is reported as someone breaking the law who works for this president, I’m going to lose my job.’”
Yet Donalds had a different take. He shot back, “No, that’s simply not true because there’s a difference between you have [sic] actual evidence that would lead toward an investigation versus, no pun intended, trumped up evidence, which is exactly what took place as far back as the Russia collusion scandal.”
Donalds added, “You have to deal with the fact that, yes, during this current presidential campaign, the Biden administration and the Department of Justice were either working with or allowing these indictments, which were silly. Everybody knew they were political, but they were allowed to continue… They raided Mar-A-Lago. I mean, I can go on. You cannot allow our system of justice to be degraded to such a degree basically for politics.”
But Smerconish was quick to point out that in many cases, those fired from their posts on Friday were the regular rank and file, without any say in what cases they were assigned.
On the heels of the Friday firings, Trump is expected to purge thousands of civil servants from the government and he, with the help of billionaire DOGE director Elon Musk, looks to cut “at least $2 trillion” from U.S. government spending by eliminating “waste.”
“I myself has been plenty critical of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and this whole process over several years. I’m not thinking about them,” said Smerconish. “I’m thinking about a woman, a man in the D.C. field office who played no policy role, was given an assignment to go out and conduct an investigation whose name now shows up on a list.”
He added, “It sounds awfully McCarthy-like.”