(AFP) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday that he would immediately fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two federal cases against him, if he wins the November election. Trump, who is awaiting sentencing on separate charges relating to hush money payments, is accused by Smith of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s remarks targeting the special counsel prompted the campaign of his White House rival Kamala Harris to accuse the former president of thinking he was “above the law.” Trump’s lawyers filed a motion meanwhile which sought the dismissal of the election subversion case on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed — an argument that they successfully used in another case against the former president brought by the special counsel.
Trump was charged in Florida with mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, but the case was tossed out by District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee. The legitimacy of special counsels has been validated in numerous other cases and Cannon’s extraordinary ruling has been appealed by Smith. Trump praised Cannon as a “brave, brilliant judge” during an interview on Thursday with conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt.
Trump, who has threatened to prosecute his perceived political enemies if reelected, was asked by Hewitt whether he would pardon himself or dismiss Smith on his first day back in the White House. “It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said. Smith was appointed special counsel by Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland. A US president does not have the authority to dismiss a special counsel, but if reelected, Trump could appoint a new attorney general who could do so. A Trump-appointed attorney general could also have any federal cases against him thrown out.
Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesman, said Trump’s comments “are right in line with the warnings made by Trump’s former Chief of Staff (John Kelly) that he wants to rule as a dictator with unchecked power.” “A second Trump term, where a more unstable and unhinged Trump has essentially no guardrails and is surrounded by loyalists who will enable his worst instincts, is guaranteed to be more dangerous,” Moussa added.
Trump, 78, had been scheduled to go on trial for the election subversion charges in March, but the case was frozen while his lawyers argued that an ex-president should be immune from criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court ruled in July that a former president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted while in office, but can be pursued for unofficial acts.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress that was to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory — when it was violently attacked by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. The former president is also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election. In May, Trump was convicted in New York of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. He also faces racketeering charges in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
© 2024 AFP
