ATLANTA—Former Vice President Mike Pence pledged that, if elected president in 2024, he would fire the senior leaders at the Department of Justice in the wake of the Russia collusion hoax and the FBI’s targeting “radical-traditional Catholics.”
“If I become president of the United States, we’re going to clean house on the entire top floor of the Justice Department,” Pence told The Daily Signal in a Friday interview at The Gathering, an event at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead hosted by radio host Erick Erickson.
“Let’s be clear, the American people have lost confidence in equal treatment under the law, and I understand that. I lived through the Mueller investigation,” the former vice president explained, referencing the Russia collusion investigation under special counsel Robert Mueller. “I was questioned throughout that and required to retain private counsel of my own, incurred a half a million dollars in legal fees, for what we now know was a complete hoax, all grounded in opposition research and fueled by FBI agents that literally falsified official records and have still not been held to account.”
Pence was referring to the canard that former President Donald Trump was an agent of Russia, based mostly on the Hillary Clinton campaign’s opposition research, namely a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email in filing a request for surveillance at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
“Then we lived through the impeachment of the president over a phone call and all the swirling accusations around that,” the former vice president added, referring to the 2019 Trump impeachment centered on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate claims of corruption involving then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Pence noted, “It’s even been more troubling since we left office to see what appears for many Americans to be a double standard. I mean, the relentless pursuit of the president on a range of issues—the former president—but for five years, the lack of interest at the Justice Department and looking into very serious allegations concerning Hunter Biden and also the Biden family broadly.”
Hunter Biden took many lucrative jobs in countries where his father served as the Obama administration point man, such as Ukraine and China. While President Biden has insisted that his son did nothing wrong and that he himself played no role in his son’s business dealings, evidence continues to emerge that Hunter Biden was trading on his father’s name, offering access in exchange for large payoffs.
The Justice Department has been investigating Hunter Biden for years on tax charges, and in July, a judge rejected what critics call a “sweetheart” plea deal that would have offered the first son broad immunity for the time period during which he made millions in Ukraine.
“My hope is that’s starting to shift with the sweetheart plea deal going away, that I think that gave hope to people across the country that maybe we’re getting back, but it’s just going to take cleaning house at the Justice Department at the highest levels,” Pence said.
“Look, I was on the Judiciary Committee for 10 years. I know how it all works,” Pence, who served in Congress from 2001 to 2013, told The Daily Signal. “I believe in my heart of hearts that we can people the Justice Department at the highest levels and the FBI at the highest levels with men and women who are seen across the political spectrum as people of integrity devoted to the fair administration of justice. And that’s what we’ll do to restore confidence in our justice system.”
The former vice president also discussed his plan to outsource many of the federal government’s powers to the states. He noted that the Founders “intended these states to be laboratories of innovation and reform.”
Pence said he would shut down the federal Department of Education and transfer “resources and control for housing and welfare and education all back to the states.”
His plan calls for curbing the excesses of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The plan involves a bill to send Obamacare dollars back to the states through block grants “in ways that will benefit people in their states and bring ideas like health savings accounts, consumer direct and health care.” It also “eviscerates all the mandates in Obamacare.”
Pence said he would also abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and task other branches of government with performing its proper functions.
Listen to the interview here.
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