Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump has announced the immediate dismissal of special investigator Jack Smith if he wins the election in November. “I would fire him in two seconds,” Trump said in a podcast hosted by conservative moderator Hugh Hewitt on Thursday (local time). The ex-president also dismissed reports that he had made positive comments about Adolf Hitler as “made up”.
In the interview, Trump sharply attacked the special prosecutor, who reports to the independent US Department of Justice, and called him a “very dishonest man.” The campaign team of his Democratic rival Kamala Harris then accused Trump of thinking he was “above the law.”
Smith, who was appointed special counsel by Democratic Attorney General Merrick Garland under President Joe Biden, filed two cases against Trump after he left the White House.
Smith obtained the indictment against Trump in a federal court in Washington over his massive attempts to manipulate the election after his defeat by Biden in 2020. He also initiated the criminal proceedings in the documents affair in Florida – which Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon stopped. She justified the decision by saying that Attorney General Garland had violated the Constitution by appointing the special counsel to investigate the case. She thus granted a request from Trump’s lawyers.
Smith appealed the decision. Trump praised Cannon as a “courageous, brilliant judge” during Thursday’s interview. Meanwhile, the former US president’s lawyers have now filed a motion to drop the election manipulation case – also arguing that Smith was illegally appointed.
A US president does not have the authority to fire a special counsel, but if Trump is re-elected, he could appoint a new attorney general who could in turn do so. A Trump-appointed attorney general could also have the federal cases against him dismissed.
Trump’s comments were “consistent with warnings from Trump’s former chief of staff that he wants to rule like a dictator with unchecked power,” said a spokesman for the Harris campaign, Ammar Moussa. “A second Trump term in which an unstable and unbalanced Trump (…) is surrounded by loyalists who support his worst instincts is guaranteed to be even more dangerous.”
Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly said in an interview with the New York Times, among other things, that the ex-president had made positive comments about Hitler several times and “certainly preferred the dictatorial approach in government.” Trump dismissed the reports on Thursday during a visit to a bakery in Las Vegas. Kelly “made up stories,” he said.