MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out many of President Donald Trump's first moves as likely to be overturned by legal challenges — but he said they still signaled the direction he wanted to take the government.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday fired more than a dozen officials who worked on special counsel Jack Smith's investigations into the president after he lost the 2020 election, and NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian described the move as unprecedented and possibly unlawful.
"This is a shock-and-awe campaign that the Trump administration is waging at the Justice Department," Dilanian said. "And this act of firing these career prosecutors who worked for Jack Smith, this is really stunning. I mean, it's hard to explain to the public because they probably think, well, of course he's doing that, right? They investigated the president and he comes in and he's firing them.
"It just doesn't happen, and it appears to have been illegal because these are people who have civil service protection — you can't just fire these folks. You have to have cause to fire them. There was no cause or proper cause given in that letter, no allegation that they did anything wrong or acted inappropriately or were incompetent, and so they're going to appeal these filings and they'll probably win, but it won't matter in the end because their careers essentially at the Justice Department are over, and many of these people were very accomplished career prosecutors."
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The DOJ issued a statement saying that Acting Attorney General James McHenry removed the officials because he didn't believe they could be trusted to implement the president's agenda, but Dilanian said the move would encourage other career prosecutors to fall in line.
"It's sending a message to other people at the Justice Department, you know, get in line or your job is in peril," Dilanian said, "and I'm talking to people across the department who are sending me copies of memos that go out every day. There is a lot of deep, deep concern, not just about the typical change of policy that comes with the new administration, but a fundamental reshaping here and a message that is really tries to deter enforcement of the law."
Scarborough agreed those terminations may not stand legally, like other Trump orders in his first week, but he said damage was already done to the democratic institutions he had targeted.
"So many of these things that are happening, that are moving forward, Ken was just talking about how possible civil service protections were violated in the firings of these Justice Department officials," Scarborough said.
"You could look at the firing of the inspectors generals and, of course, that went against the legal requirements that the Senate be given a 30-day notice. You look at the grants being frozen provided by the United States Congress and therefore, within their constitutional realm, and not the president's to freeze it, and people talking about how that also will present great legal challenges, and you can go down the list. So many of these things, there are legal questions on whether they're going to even be upheld or not. Certainly there are going to be, you know, just dozens and dozens of legal challenges, and I suspect many of those will probably be held up."
"But that's not really the purpose, whether they get held up or not," Scarborough added. "That's really not the purpose of doing this all at once, right out of the gate, is it? I mean, this is, as Ken said, it's a shock-and-awe campaign, and what sticks, sticks, and what doesn't stick still sends the message."
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