Honig: Trump Firing DOJ Personnel Over Jan. 6 Investigations Changes the ‘Very Nature of DoJ’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
SCIUTTO: “Ellie, is there any legal recourse for these individuals who have been fired?”
HONIG: “Generally, yes, Jim. So most of these people have some level of civil service protection, meaning ordinarily before you can be fired under the civil service rules, you have to be given administrative process and notice and a hearing and all that. Donald Trump seems to want to be flip where I fire you first, and then you can take the time and expense going out and hiring an attorney and challenging this. So we could see challenges. And Jim, just to one important point that Evan made when you are on the line, as we used to say, which I used to be, part of the reason you can do your job effectively is it doesn‘t matter who the president is. It happened, in my experience, that my first half of my experience at DoJ was under a Republican administration, switched over to the Obama Administration. I had another second half under the Obama Administration. It made zero difference to the work we did in New York. It made zero difference to our pursuit of these criminal cases. That‘s the way it ought to be. But when you‘re firing people explicitly for political reasons and the letter that went out earlier this week said the reason you‘re being fired is because you worked on a case against Trump that changes the very nature of DoJ.”