During an April 1 appearance in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced the weaponization of the federal bureaucracy and called for a president to “clean house” of federal bureaucrats.
Since retaking the House, Republicans have mounted investigations into the ways that the federal law enforcement apparatus has allegedly been weaponized against political enemies. Speaking at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, DeSantis suggested that the bureaucracy is another means by which the federal government has been weaponized.
He said that the solution to the weaponization of the bureaucracy would be for a president to “clean house” by making many bureaucrats eligible for termination at the president’s pleasure.
DeSantis began his speech with a reference to his COVID-19 policies. While the rest of the nation responded with lockdowns, mask, and vaccine mandates, Florida largely remained open and unrestricted during the pandemic.
Weaponization of the Bureaucracy
DeSantis told the crowd that the bureaucracy is a key element of the larger weaponization of law enforcement.“This is a bureaucracy, particularly the FBI and Department of Justice, that is totally off its rocker,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis cited a quote by President Ronald Reagan, who famously said that the most frightening words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
“He was right about that,” DeSantis said. “I think the difference between his time and our time is yes, the bureaucracy still does all those things.
“But the bureaucracy has become weaponized against people that the elites don’t like,” DeSantis said, citing a scandal involving IRS targeting of conservative groups, COVID-19 mandates, and FBI targeting of concerned parents speaking out at school board meetings.
The bureaucracy “just by fiat wanted to impose a rule on this country that you don’t have a right to earn a living unless you submit to getting a COVID shot. That is a bureaucracy that doesn’t have your best interests at heart, a bureaucracy that colludes with big tech companies to censor truthful information, whether it’s during the 2020 election, whether it’s about COVID-19.”
DeSantis was referencing findings showing that the White House colluded with major tech platforms to censor and suppress stories critical of U.S. COVID-19 policy, including the effectiveness of lockdowns, masks, and the novel mRNA vaccine.
Power of the Purse
The solution to the weaponization of the bureaucracy, DeSantis said, is for Congress to take seriously its power of the purse.DeSantis is far from the first Republican to float such a solution. Under the Constitution, all funding bills must originate in the House; Republicans have proposed using this power to deny funding to the Department of Justice, FBI, IRS, and other bodies accused of political weaponization.
“Why did we get to this point? We got to this point because Congress has not done its duty to hold these agencies accountable,” DeSantis said. “You have the power of the purse. Don’t put the government on autopilot. If they’re abusing authority, you use the purse strings when you legislate. Make sure you’re telling them what needs to be done—don’t give that to the bureaucracy to fill in the blanks: that takes legislative power from the the people to unelected bureaucrats.”
Further, DeSantis said, a “determined and disciplined executive” is needful “to systematically root out these politicized bureaucrats.”
“You have authority. The executive has authority under our Constitution to clean house,” DeSantis said. “You also can go and find the people that are not doing the job and get rid of them. It needs to be done because otherwise you have a situation where, a Republican could win the White House, and yet the left still controls the executive branch bureaucracy.
Prosecutors
DeSantis addressed rising crime rates in America’s metropolitan areas as part of the weaponization of government, blaming it on “progressive prosecutors funded by people like George Soros.”Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, fringe positions such as defunding the police and limiting criminal penalties for violent crime began to be taken seriously by district attorneys (DA) and other local prosecutors. In many cases, these left-wing prosecutors refuse to enforce laws against violent crimes.
“These prosecutors go in with an ideological agenda,” DeSantis said. “They think it’s their role as a prosecutor to manipulate the law. to ignore the law, to pick and choose which laws that they will enforce, all in service of politics and pursuing ideology.”
“Prosecutors are not above the law,” the Florida governor added. “If they don’t like the law, then the appropriate thing to do is to resign your position and run for the legislature and try to change the law. You have no right to nullify the law, and they put so many people at risk as a result of doing that.”
DeSantis said that as governor, he has not allowed such prosectors to keep their posts in major Florida cities.
“When we had one of those DAs in Tampa, that said he wasn’t going to enforce some of our duly elected duly enacted laws in the state of Florida, we didn’t let that stand,” DeSantis said. “I removed him from his post.”
DeSantis also took the opportunity to address Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who is leading an investigation of President Donald Trump that recently resulted in an indictment. Republicans have blasted the move as political, noting that the charges against Trump are thought to be misdemeanors past the statute of limitations.
DeSantis says Bragg fits into the larger weaponization of the law and the government against Americans.
“[Bragg’s] whole platform when he got elected was that he was going to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanors,” DeSantis said. “He was gonna keep as many people out of jail—even habitual criminals—as possible. ... So that’s his posture. He doesn’t want to charge people with felonies.
“So now,” DeSantis continued, “he turned around—purely for political purposes—and indicted [the] former president on misdemeanor offenses that they’re straining to try to convert into felonies. That is when you know that the law has been weaponized for political purposes, that is when you know that the left is using that to target their political opponents.”
Initially, DeSantis was silent on Trump’s pending indictment, however, the likely 2024 contender has since spoken out against the indictment of his leading rival for the presidency.
