Ron DeSantis Suggests He’d Fire Jack Smith If He Wins Presidency

(RepublicanPress.org) – Once considered the face of the GOP’s post-Trump era, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) approval ratings have taken a nosedive the last few months, with the former president leading him 51.3 points. However, he has been pressing forward with his campaign nonetheless, recently coming out to suggest firing Special Counsel Jack Smith.

On December 28, DeSantis sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Fox News host and former US congressman, Jason Chaffetz. During the interview, the conversation turned to Donald Trump’s mounting legal problems. DeSantis stressed the need to focus on President Joe Biden’s record to defeat him in 2024.

Ron DeSantis says he plans to fire Jack Smith if electedhttps://t.co/IjD7MEd5qT

— Salon (@Salon) December 29, 2023

However, the Florida governor explained that if he won the election, he would start focusing his attention on “holding [the] people accountable who [had] weaponized the legal system” to attack their “political enemies.” DeSantis said that effort “starts with day one, [with] firing somebody like Jack Smith.” Yet, it remains unclear the potential political cost of doing so.

According to current special counsel regulations, only the personal action of the attorney general can remove Smith, and only for a good reason. However, there is a simple workaround, as demonstrated by former President Richard Nixon’s indirect firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to terminate Cox. Richardson failed to comply, opting to resign instead.

In his absence, Nixon ordered Richardson’s deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to remove Cox. But, like Richardson, he refused and stepped down from office. Solicitor General Robert Bork was the next Justice Department official in the line of succession, and he ended up carrying out Nixon’s directive to fire Cox.

According to POLITICO, Georgetown University Law Center professor Paul Rothstein pointed out that Nixon’s decision to have Cox fired marked “the beginning of the end” for the former president.