Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) on Tuesday called on the Department of Justice to "purge" any members of the FBI who are accused of not supporting President Donald Trump.
During an interview on MSNBC, host Hallie Jackson asked Rooney if he supported President Donald Trump's Twitter rampage against the FBI over the Christmas holiday.
"That investigation is totally off the rails!" Rooney exclaimed about the FBI's Russia investigation.
"But he's tweeting about his deputy director and he's tweeting about FBI agents," Jackson noted. "Do you think that's appropriate for the president?"
"I'm very concerned that the DOJ and the FBI, whether you want to call it 'deep state' or what, are kind of off the rails," Rooney repeated.
"Congressman, you just called the FBI and the DOJ off the rails," Jackson said, slightly taken aback. "Fundamentally, how is that something you are okay with talking about. How does that not sort of undermine the work that these agencies are doing?"
Rooney said that he had seen evidence that "the agencies don't respect the Constitution and will not put the ends before the means."
"That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with," the MSNBC host charged.
"Yeah but we've seen a lot of 'ends before the means' culture out of the Obama administration, out of Hillary Clinton," the Republican lawmaker opined. "With her $84 million of potentially illegal campaign contributions or the Clinton Foundation/Uranium One. People need a good clean government."
"Do you think people don't have a good clean government?" Jackson wondered. "There are those that look at comments like the ones that you are making and say, 'Republicans are working to essentially to try to discredit the Department of Justice and thus discredit the Russia investigations.'"
"Is that not what you're doing?" Jackson pressed.
"I don't want to discredit them," Rooney insisted. "I would just like to see the directors of those agencies purging, and say, 'Look, we've got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here.' Those are the people I want the American people to see and know the good work is being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state."
"Language like that, Congressman, purge?" the MSNBC host said. "Purge the Department of Justice?"
"Sure," the congressman stated, pointing to members of the Department of Justice that Republicans have accused of bias.
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
