DeSantis joins Trump in threatening to defund the FBI and DOJ

Ron DeSantis has joined Donald Trump’s call to rebut the Justice Department and FBI for “weaponizing” the justice system through their investigations into the former president.

The Florida governor also attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who sued Trump earlier this week, saying, “If we had someone in Tampa trying to pursue that agenda, I would have ripped him out of his position.” .’

DeSantis’ hard talk comes as polls show Trump, even in the wake of his indictment, is leading him in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis has not yet officially announced his participation, but is widely expected to make an offer.

In his last few public appearances. DeSantis has hammered the justice system, including calling on Congress to defund the two powerful federal agencies, hinting that if he were president he wouldn’t be afraid to cut their budgets.

Speaking Thursday at Hillsdale College in Michigan, DeSantis said of the Justice Department and the FBI: “If you never hold them accountable through the legislative process, neither through the law nor through the budget, that’s where the power will naturally accumulate.’

He opposed arguments by President Joe Biden and other leaders that the agencies should maintain their “independence.”

“You’ve also kind of had a trope that many Republican presidents have accepted over the years that DOJ and FBI, I quote, are independent of the White House. And first of all, these people have guns, they can put you in jail, saying they are independent means they don’t have to be held accountable,” he said.

“No, they are executive agencies that report to the elected president of the United States,” he said, adding that a president should use his executive power “to hold those agencies accountable.”

“You’ve had an executive that didn’t want to do anything to bring them in by holding them accountable and getting involved in what they’re doing. And then I think you’ve had Congress, which has just completely given up on using the wallet and it’s almost like these agencies just have the right to operate indefinitely. If you send out that signal over many decades, that’s just human nature. They will abuse their power. I mean, the founders would have predicted that within a minute in New York,” he concluded.

His argument echoes that of Trump, who has stepped up his post-indictment calls where he faces felony charges related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

DeSantis originally took on Trump a few times — saying he didn’t know what was going to happen to pay porn stars hush money — but when polls showed Trump’s popularity, Florida’s governor changed tactics and said he’d leave New York block if it tries to extradite Trump. (the state didn’t as the former president voluntarily surrendered).

Ron DeSantis echoed Donald Trump (above) in his criticism of the Justice Department and the FBI

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bratt (above) has also been targeted by Trump and DeSantis

Trump faces more than 30 charges related to a $30,000 payout to a doorman trying to sell information about a child Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock; $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a $130,000 payment to Daniels.

All told, the charges – falsifying business records in the first degree – carry a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison under New York law, but even if convicted on all charges, Trump is unlikely to that time is condemned. Each charge is a low misdemeanor punishable by up to four years in prison for each charge.

Any conviction would not stop Trump from running for president.

Trump called on Republicans in Congress the morning after his indictment to refute the DoJ and FBI. The federal government is not involved in the New York case, but the Justice Department is prosecuting two separate cases against the former president: one over classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and another over his attempts to change the election results. of 2020 to be cancelled.

REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS SHOULD PAY DOJ AND FBI UNTIL THEY COME TO SENSE. THE DEMOCRATS HAVE COMPLETELY ARMONIZED LAW ENFORCEMENT IN OUR COUNTRY AND ARE USING THIS ABUSE OF POWER TO LOWER OUR ALREADY BELIEVED ELECTIONS!” Trump wrote on his social media platform TruthSocial.

But GOP lawmakers don’t have enough votes in Congress to make that happen.

Trump has also attacked the Manhattan DA, calling Alvin Bragg a “criminal.”

“The criminal is the prosecutor for illegally leaking massive amounts of Grand Jury information for which he should be prosecuted, or at least resigned,” he said Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago in a speech ranting went against the charges against him.

DeSantis also attacked Bragg on Friday, although he did not name him.

“You have the man in Manhattan, but honestly he’s one of maybe a dozen or more across the country that gets elected on an ideological agenda, usually with funding from people like George Soros, and they come in and they try manipulate the elections. law or advance a political agenda,’ he said.

“If we had someone in Tampa trying to pursue that agenda, I would have ripped him out of his position,” he added.

Trump also claims that Bragg is funded by billionaire George Soros, who many conspiracy theorists claim uses his money to control world events.

Bragg is an inverted (Soros) racist, following his orders from DC. I’ve beaten them TWICE, much better the second time, and despite their DISINFORMATION campaign, they don’t want to go up against ‘TRUMP’ or my GREAT FILE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last month.

Soros, who made his fortune in hedge funds, said he never contributed to Bragg’s election campaign. Soros has become a hate figure for Trump and his allies.