Elie Honig: Trump Firing DOJ’s Nonpolitical Appointees Is ‘Completely Abnormal’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
SCIUTTO: “You just wrote a piece, Elie, for New York magazine, about how Trump has already changed the Justice Department, quote, quoting you to yourself here. Imagine working at the Justice Department right now and discovering some investigative thread that might lead to the president or someone close to him, or some administration bigwig. What are your choices? Follow up and get fired - Or look away and keep your job. Either way, the case goes nowhere. I wonder is that the result of these decisions in your view, Elie? Or perhaps the goal as well?”
HONIG: “Well, I think it‘s absolutely the result of these decisions, Jim. And what we are seeing here is completely abnormal. And here‘s why within the Justice Department, there are a very few handful of positions that are political appointees. The attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and a handful of others. It is completely normal and appropriate for a new presidential administration to fire and replace those people. This is why Merrick Garland is no longer the attorney general, but the vast majority of prosecutors, like I once was, FBI agents who work at DoJ, %99 plus are nonpolitical appointees. They are people who get hired based on their qualifications, and their job is to just do the work to follow the facts. That is the very essence of DoJ. When you come in and start firing those nonpolitical appointees, as Donald Trump has been doing, you send a message that simply cannot be missed, that if you do something that threatens the power structure here, you could lose your job.”