According to recent reports, former president Donald Trump is doubling down on his intentions to purge the deep state if he is reelected later this year. Trump has long campaigned on the mass firing of bureaucrats from agencies such as the DOJ and FBI.
The mass of bureaucrats in government agencies is also referred to as the “administrative state” in some instances. Many have suggested that these unelected government employees have unchecked power to enforce their own rules and regulations that extend beyond the checks and balances imposed on the federal government.
Some have even claimed that federal agencies have become a fourth branch of government that operates outside of the Constitutional framework. As a result, Trump and others on the right have made it their goal to reel in various federal agencies.
Reportedly, Trump is mainly focused on gutting the DOJ, asserting that civil servants within its ranks unfairly target conservatives. Substantiating this claim, Republicans have criticized the agency’s handling of issues such as the Russia collusion hoax, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and more.
Sources familiar with the Trump administration have noted that the former president would seek to decentralize the DOJ’s power to other law enforcement agencies to limit its authority. Furthermore, sources indicated that Trump would also seek to eliminate the FBI’s general counsel as well.
Before Trump left office following the 2020 election, he signed an executive order that would reclassify the employment status of federal employees to “Schedule F,” which would have made them easier to fire. This would have provided the president with more flexibility in holding government agencies accountable for their actions.
Last year, Trump emphasized his vow to the American people to “demolish the deep state. He maintained that he would fight a variety of bad actors within the federal government, such as “communists, Marxists, and fascists.”
“We will demolish the deep state,” Trump promised in 2023. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”
The American Tribune also reported on the “Agenda 47,” former President Trump’s official plan to dismantle the deep state. The GOP frontrunner noted that reigning in the deep state’s corruption would be a move to “reclaim our democracy.” “Agenda 47” began:
“First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.
Second, we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them. The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left’s political enemies, which they’re doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.
Third, we will totally reform FISA courts which are so corrupt that the judges seemingly do not care when they are lied to in warrant applications. So many judges have seen so many applications that they know were wrong, or at least they must have known. They do nothing about it, they’re lied to.”
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