Former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers on Tuesday shredded President Donald Trump's moves to purge the United States Department of Justice of lawyers who once worked for former special counsel Jack Smith.
Appearing on CNN, Rodgers said that Trump's efforts to fire or sideline multiple career DOJ officials sends a "terrible message" to the rest of the department.
"The president is not supposed to direct the activities of the Department of Justice," Rodgers said. "The notion that he has policies and priorities that he wants the Justice Department to act on is not something that historically has been a thing at the Justice Department, right? Criminal cases are supposed to be brought based on evidence. They're supposed to be based on the law. They're not supposed to be based on the whims and the retribution desires of the president.
"So just the notion that they are being fired, I mean, I guess at least they were upfront about it, that they were fired because they had displeased the president in prosecuting him. But that doesn't make it legitimate. It doesn't make it right and I think the notion is that it's demoralizing and really, really damaging to the Department of Justice going forward."
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Rodgers then predicted that this would have a negative impact on the DOJ's ability to prosecute criminals in the coming years.
"The best prosecutors, the best lawyers in the country are not going to want to work for this administration," she said. "You know, they're not going to want to do what a Trump Justice Department is going to be asked to do. So I think it's going to be very challenging for them to get the best people, and even people at all, to be honest, to work in this department. And there's a lot of important work every day that's not at all political, that everyone would agree these are cases that should be prosecuted."
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