A CNN panel cornered a Republican strategist who tried to assert that President Donald Trump was justified in his purge of career Justice Department prosecutors because they fall under the executive branch — after years of bemoaning that former President Joe Biden weaponized the very same agency.
Scott Jennings, who has served as an advisor on four presidential campaigns, told fellow panelists on "NewsNight" he felt Trump's mass firing was "reasonable" because Americans voted for the president — not career prosecutors.
"I think it was pretty reasonable for the president, who was just elected, to not want people in his government — that he runs — who were just most recently trying to put him in jail," Jennings opined. "It seems like common sense to me that it wouldn't be right to force the president to run a government, which at least in part has recently been trying to jail him."
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Jennings acknowledged those very same career prosecutors may have done nothing wrong.
When Ashley Akers, who recently resigned from the Justice Department in protest of Trump's pardons to Jan. 6 attackers, tried to counter that the department ought to act independently of political influence, Jennings gave an eyebrow-raising response.
Jennings replied the Justice Department falls under the executive branch, and the president appoints the attorney general.
"The department works for the president," he said.
And when Democratic strategist Maria Cardona fired back that the Justice Department serves Americans, not the president, Jennings doubled down.
"It works for the executive branch," he said, later adding: "You're acting like it's an independent branch of government."
He scoffed as Cardona tried to insist the career prosecutors work for Americans.
Cardona noted there are laws preventing presidents from firing career prosecutors without cause.
At that point, Democratic strategist Ashley Allison called out Jennings for his sudden change of heart.
"By what you're saying then is the former Department of Justice under Joe Biden acted under his — there was nothing wrong with it," she began. "By your logic, if you apply it to the last administration, which I don't think is the case, then if Joe Biden wanted to go after Donald Trump because he wanted to, the attorney general should be able to do it."
When Jennings tried to say Biden ordered the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Trump, host Abby Phillip interrupted and corrected him that it's "completely false" that Biden ordered the creation of a post to investigate Trump.
"Hold on Scott. You just said something that's not correct," Phillip said. "You tried to slip it in there."
She added: "That did not happen."
As the two exchanged a tense back-and-forth over the prosecution of Trump, Phillip returned to Allison's point, and asked Jennings what's wrong, by his logic, with Biden's Justice Department prosecuting Trump.
"What would be wrong with Joe Biden saying, 'I'm going to order the Justice Department to go after my political enemies? Wouldn't there be nothing wrong with that?"
When Jennings said he saw no problem with the president ordering the Justice Department, Phillip appeared stunned.
"That is quite an extraordinary acknowledgment. After four years of saying the Justice Department has been wrongly weaponized against Republicans, you are now saying it's ok.
