Conservative Fox News guest shreds DOJ lawyer for seeking pro-Trump prosecutors: ‘Congress should defund’

A conservative legal scholar and writer is the latest to call for an end to Donald Trump’s evolution of the Department of Justice after a former top prosecutor solicited explicitly pro-Trump lawyers for roles in the administration.

The Justice Department’s apparent attempt to enlist loyalists to U.S. attorney’s offices drew a call to defund the agency entirely from a somewhat unlikely source: National Review writer and former chief assistant U.S. attorney, Andy McCarthy, wrote on X that the agency should be shut down if that was the case.

He fired back at Chad Mizelle, a former acting general counsel for Homeland Security and Justice Department chief of staff, who issued a call on X for pro-Trump attorneys to apply for jobs.

“If support for incumbent the president is now a condition of enforcing federal law, Congress should defund DOJ,” wrote McCarthy.

”DOJ should only exist if it’s nonpartisan. Too dangerous to liberty otherwise,” added McCarthy, noting that if former Attorney General Merrick Garland had similarly solicited lawyers who support Joe Biden, “MAGA & GOP would be calling for impeachment.”

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The president has used the Justice Department as a cudgel against his political foes since retaking power. In recent months the agency has attempted to launch criminal cases, mostly unsuccessfully, against Trump’s enemies, including former FBI director James Comey, members of Congress, and New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump and his real estate empire for business-related fraud.

Last week, those efforts expanded further with an FBI raid on an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized records and votes related to the 2020 presidential election. Trump later posted on Truth Social his own gleeful response to the raid.

The responses to McCarthy’s post, mostly from fellow conservatives, reacted with anger. Many accused the Justice Department’s existing bureaucracy of being staffed exclusively by “left-wing” attorneys, or demanded to know why concerns about the DOJ’s impartiality weren’t raised during the Biden administration.

Others simply accused him of being incorrect or believing that the DOJ should be free to undermine the president.

But his post earned a positive response from another conservative writer and frequent Trump critic, John Podhoretz, as well as Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman.

“Thank you. I thought I was taking crazy pills,” wrote Podhoretz. McCarthy responded: “Crazy pills would be a blessing.”

Goldman, for his part, questioned why it had taken McCarthy and others to realize the extent of Trump’s transformation of the DOJ.

“Agree. But this has been the case since Day One,” Goldman wrote.

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Meanwhile, the administration’s raid of Fulton County’s election offices has sparked fears that the White House and Justice Department are attempting to interfere in upcoming elections, including the 2026 midterms. On Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to confirm during a CNN interview the purpose or suspected criminal acts being investigated by the FBI in Fulton County or whether the raid was tied to a larger investigation of 2020 swing states.

He also could not say for certain why DNI Tulsi Gabbard was involved, and said only that she wasn’t part of the grand jury investigation being pursued by agents during the raid.

Blanche did, however, affirm on ABC’s This Week that the primary purpose of the Justice Department now was to implement the president’s priorities.

He disagreed with the assertion that topics the president had repeatedly posted on Truth Social about and spoken to reporters about frequently was one of them.

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“If you’re going to work in this department, you are going to execute on the president's priorities,” Blanche said, responding to the host’s question about the dismissals and resignations of prosecutors who have refused to be involved in the president’s revenge campaign.

The DOJ under Trump recently suffered two visible blows as it was announced that Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the Trump who has never prosecuted a case, left the Eastern District of Virginia after failing to prosecute Trump’s enemies at his direction. A federal judge previously accused her of “masquerading” as the district’s top prosecutor after her continued use of the “U.S. Attorney” title, despite a court ruling that found she was unlawfully serving.

Trump’s loyalist pick for U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Alina Habba, was similarly found to be unlawfully serving in that position and was disqualified, with an appeals court ruling that her fate won’t be reconsidered.