Ron DeSantis has joined Donald Trump‘s call to defund the Justice Department and FBI over its ‘weaponization’ of the legal system by its investigations of the former president.
The Florida governor also attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump earlier this week, saying ‘if we had somebody in Tampa that was trying to pursue that agenda, I’d yanked him from his position.’
DeSantis’ tough talk comes as polls show that, even in the wake of his indictment, Trump leads him in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis has not officially announced he’s running but is widely expected to announce a bid.
In his past couple of public appearances. DeSantis has hammered the legal system, including calling on Congress to defund the two powerful federal agencies, hinting that, if he were president, he wouldn’t be afraid to slash their budgets.
Ron DeSantis has joined Donald Trump’s call to defund the Justice Department and FBI over its ‘weaponization’ of the legal system
Ron DeSantis has been echoing Donald Trump (above) in criticizing the Justice Department and the FBI
Speaking at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Thursday, DeSantis said of the Justice Department and FBI: ‘If you never hold them accountable through the legislative process, either through law or through budget, of course, power is going to accumulate there.’
He brushed back against arguments made by President Joe Biden and other leaders that the agencies needed to maintain their ‘independence.’
‘You’ve also had kind of a trope that a lot of Republican presidents have accepted over the years that DOJ and FBI are, quote, independent of the White House. And first of all, these people have guns, they can put you in jail, saying they’re independent means they’re unaccountable,’ he said.
‘No, they are executive branch agencies that report to the elected President of the United States,’ he said, adding that a president should use their executive power ‘to hold those agencies accountable.’
‘You’ve had an executive branch that’s not wanted to do anything to reel them in by holding them accountable and getting involved in what they’re doing. And then I think you’ve had a Congress, which is just totally given up on using the purse strings and it’s almost like these agencies just have a right to operate infinitum. When you send that signal over many decades, it’s just human nature. They are going to abuse their power. I mean, the founders would have predicted that in a New York minute,’ he concluded.
His argument aligns with ones made by Trump, who has ramped up his calls post-indictment, where he faces felony charges tied to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
DeSantis originally took a few digs at Trump – saying he didn’t know what went into paying hush money to porn stars – but as polls showed Trump’s popularity, the Florida governor switched tactics, saying he would block New York if it attempted to extradite Trump (the state did not as the former president surrendered voluntarily).
Trump faces over 30 charges related to a $30,000 payoff to a doorman trying to sell information about a child that Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock, $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and a $130,000 payment to Daniels.
All together, the charges – falsifying business records in the first degree – carry a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison under New York law, but even if convicted on all charges, it’s unlikely Trump would be sentenced to that much time. Each charge is a low-level felony that carries a maximum of four years in prison for each count.
Any conviction would not keep Trump from running for president.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bratt (above) also has been targeted by Trump and DeSantis
Trump, on the morning after his indictment, called on Republicans in Congress to defund the DOJ and the FBI. The federal government is not involved in the New York case, but the Justice Department is pursuing two separate cases against the former president: one on the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and another on his attempts to reverse the 2020 election results.
‘REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS SHOULD DEFUND THE DOJ AND FBI UNTIL THEY COME TO THEIR SENSES. THE DEMOCRATS HAVE TOTALLY WEAPONIZED LAW ENFORCEMENT IN OUR COUNTRY AND ARE VICIOUSLY USING THIS ABUSE OF POWER TO INTERFERE WITH OUR ALREADY UNDER SIEGE ELECTIONS!,’ Trump wrote on his TruthSocial social media platform.
But GOP lawmakers don’t have enough votes in Congress to make that happen.
Trump also has attacked the Manhattan DA, calling Alvin Bragg a ‘criminal.’
‘The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of Grand Jury information for which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum, he should resign,’ he said Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago in a speech where he railed against the charges against him.
DeSantis also attacked Bragg on Friday, although he didn’t mention him by name.
‘You got the guy in Manhattan, but honestly, he’s one of maybe a dozen or more across the country that get elected on an ideological agenda, usually with funding from people like George Soros, and they come in and they’re trying to manipulate the law or advance a political agenda,’ he said.
‘If we had somebody in Tampa that was trying to pursue that agenda, I’d yanked him from his position,’ he added.
Trump also claims Bragg is funded by billionaire George Soros, who many conspiracy theorists claim is using his money to control world events.
‘Bragg is a (Soros) Racist in Reverse, who is taking his orders from D.C. I beat them TWICE, doing much better the second time, and despite their DISINFORMATION campaign, they don’t want to run against ‘TRUMP’ or my GREAT RECORD!’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last month.
Soros, who made his fortune in hedge funds, said he never contributed to Bragg’s election campaign. Soros has become a figure of hate for Trump and his allies.
