A former federal prosecutor warned that the Justice Department's probe of FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago is "searingly corrosive" to law enforcement.
Earlier this week, the DOJ made a "pretty shocking announcement" targeting the FBI officials who executed the 2022 search warrant at President Donald Trump's Florida resort, progressive political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen said in a Saturday episode of his Legal Breakdown podcast.
His guest, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, said the move was at once "outrageous and infuriating and yet more of the same." Kirschner argued that the probe is an attempt to "undo" the classified documents case that special counsel Jack Smith dismissed after Trump won reelection.
The case was dismissed "without prejudice," which are the "magic words" because they mean the case "can be put back on the trial track" once Trump leaves office, Kirschner noted.
"So he is trying to do everything he can to try to undo it nefariously, not in accordance with the law, not in accordance with the evidence," Kirschner said. "Here we go again with Donald Trump trying to save his own criminal a—."
Kirschner called the investigation "searingly corrosive to the operation of law enforcement," and warned it would ripple across the DOJ and "all 93 of the United States Attorney's offices around the country." Agents who work politically sensitive cases will now assume "the next administration wants to take its revenge," Kirschner warned.
"Not because we did anything wrong," Kirschner said, speaking for federal law enforcement agents. "We actually followed the facts and the law, but they want to take revenge on us because of politics."
The probe follows a pattern pointed at a larger aim, Kirschner said.
"This is Donald Trump's goal to destroy the legitimacy and the perceived legitimacy of every institution of government," Kirschner said. "And he just wants to rule over the whole mess."
Asked what protections federal law enforcement agents have, Kirschner said civil service safeguards exist on paper, but "the Trump administration doesn't give a rat's a— about the laws that protect the people that they want to seek revenge against."
Agents targeted "for the crime of doing their own jobs" still hold constitutional rights, including a Fifth Amendment that "protects not only the guilty person but the innocent person," Kirschner said.
Even so, Kirschner predicted that the Trump administration will try to make them "spend not only a lot of money, but...a lot of sleepless nights for themselves and their family."