This does not bode well at all for the rule of law:
President-elect Donald Trump plans to fire the entire team that worked with special counsel Jack Smith to pursue two federal prosecutions against the former president, including career attorneys typically protected from political retribution, according to two individuals close to Trump’s transition.
Trump is also planning to assemble investigative teams within the Justice Department to hunt for evidence in battleground states that fraud tainted the 2020 election, one of the people said.
The proposals offer new evidence that Trump’s intention to dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington is likely to focus heavily on the Justice Department, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, and that at least some of his agenda is fueled not by ideology or policy goals but personal grievance….
Smith’s office is composed of dozens of attorneys, FBI agents and support staff from across the Justice Department, many with specialties in national security and public corruption cases. Some are former Justice Department employees plucked from private practice. Most, however, are mid- and upper-level career staffers on detail to the special counsel’s team from divisions within the main Justice Department building in downtown Washington or from U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country.
In past special counsel investigations, such staff attorneys typically have returned to their regular jobs after their temporary assignments concluded. Some members of Smith’s teams have already done that. In other cases,departments that loaned employees have not yet been informed when or if they will return, according to an person familiar with the situation, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters….
Plans for federal election-fraud investigations in swing states are less well-defined, but several officials who defended the 2020 voting in key battlegrounds said they have been bracing for the possibility.
“Since there’s no malfeasance, we will certainly work with anyone who wants to investigate our work,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D). “But we will expect them to act with integrity and go where the facts — not their agendas — will lead.”
Neither the president-elect nor his allies have ever provided evidence to prove their claims of voter fraud, and they did not make similar claims during this month’s election after Trump emerged as the victor. But Trump has continued to trumpet his unproved allegations about 2020, using ominous language to suggest that he would try to criminally prosecute state officials.
In September, heclaimed without evidence in a social media post that there was “rampant cheating” in 2020 and promised that those responsible would “be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences.”
“Please beware,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Among the accusations Trump and his allies have lobbed at Benson and others: They allowed the counting of ballots from noncitizens, dead people or out-of-state residents; they illegally altered election rules during the coronavirus pandemic that allowed cheating to occur; and they barred GOP poll watchers from observing voting or counting….