Donald Trump's latest attorney general nominee has called for the prosecution of law enforcement officials who charged the former president with crimes, but panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" said their actions had already passed legal scrutiny.
Pam Bondi told Fox News last year, after Trump's indictment in Georgia, that "the prosecutors will be prosecuted" and "the investigators will be investigated." Host Joe Scarborough raised questions about her fitness to lead the Department of Justice for a president-elect whose campaign was centered around his desire for vengeance against his enemies.
"So especially in the state of Florida, a bit of a sigh of relief," Scarborough said. "Okay, this is not Matt Gaetz, it's not even close to Gaetz, this is somebody that works with both sides, but you dug into her record and you found some troubling statements about retribution."
NBC News correspondent David Rohde looked into Bondi's statements about probing the criminal inquiries into Trump, but he and Scarborough agreed that the former president's own appointees were previously unable to find serious wrongdoing in those efforts.
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"That's what [special counsel John] Durham did, it was humiliating, it wrecked his reputation," Scarborough said. "Again, this is such a losing proposition, not only is it bad for America, but it's also, it's bad for the people launching the investigation against the investigators because it brings up the underlying charges."
Durham was appointed by then-attorney general William Barr to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation that resulted in one guilty plea on an unrelated charge and two unsuccessful trial prosecutions after a three-and-a-half year investigation.
"You're right, John Durham's investigation, he was going to find that Jim Comey and John Brennan had a secret plot against Donald Trump – he didn't find that," Rohde said. "Bill Barr looked into the 2020 election fraud, didn't find it. She also talks about the 'deep state' – I've been on Fox News appearances, I've written a book on this [but] there is no deep state.
"If you think there are too many bureaucrats in Washington, there's a deep bureaucracy and you want to cut the size of government, that's fine. There's no secret cabal of FBI people and CIA people or DOJ people undermining democratically elected presidents."
Rohde questioned whether Bondi or deputy attorney general nominee Todd Blanche could legally carry out Trump's threats, because the U.S. Supreme Court's sweeping presidential immunity ruling doesn't apply to them.
"The feeling is that Bondi and Blanche won't break the law if they don't have to," Rohde said. "They don't have immunity, only the president has immunity. But it's an information war, as we said earlier, and it's Donald Trump that wants to say to anyone who dares investigate him, 'I will investigate you, I will prosecute you.' This is about chilling accountability."
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