President Trump says that he would immediately fire Special Counsel Jack Smith should he return to the White House in January, and that he would likely not face any consequences for doing so. That would likely be just the beginning of Trump’s plans to remake the Justice Department into a more partisan institution that takes direction from the White House. 

“It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds,” the former president told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. “It’s so easy, it’s so easy. Like, he’s a crooked person.”

Mr. Hewitt asked Trump if he planned to pardon himself should he return to the White House, though the former president blew past that question and did not answer. The only conviction Trump is facing so far is in a state court, where the president would not have the power to grant himself a pardon. 

During his call into Mr. Hewitt’s show, Trump was asked if he feared being impeached for a third time by a Democratic House. “I don’t think they’ll impeach me if I fire Jack Smith,” the former president said. 

Trump also notably offered some effusive praise for Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal jurist from Florida who threw out Mr. Smith’s case on the grounds that he was illegally appointed under the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. Trump praised the judge as “brilliant” during his call with Mr. Hewitt. Mr. Smith is appealing the judge’s ruling. 

On Wednesday, CBS News first reported that Judge Cannon is on the shortlist to be nominated for United State Attorney General should Trump return to the White House. 

Mr. Smith was on a mission to get Trump to trial before the 2024 election, but a series of delays — including Judge Cannon’s dismissal order — made that impossible. The election interference indictment Mr. Smith brought at Washington has faced months and months of delays at the trial level because Trump’s lawyers sought broad immunity protections, which the Supreme Court later granted. 

Firing Mr. Smith may ruffle feathers in the nation’s capital, but likely would not result in any serious consequences for Trump. In 2017, he famously fired his FBI director, James Comey, during the investigation into alleged Russian interference and collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. The decision led to a number of congressional hearings, but no action from Congress. 

Trump’s vendetta against the Justice Department and career prosecutors began during his presidency. He reportedly fumed privately about how certain U.S. Attorneys were not going after his political rivals, including the Clintons and the Biden family. He grew especially angry with department officials in the wake of the 2020 election, when leaders said that they could not find any substantial evidence of fraud and that they would not simply declare that fraud had been committed without the necessary evidence. 

In a string of social media posts over the course of the last year, Trump has made it clear that he wants the next Justice Department under his leadership to be far more deferential to partisan appointees. In August, the former president spent hours reposting images of Senator Clinton, Vice President Harris, and President Biden wearing orange prison jumpsuits. He reposted another that suggested President Obama face a military tribunal. 

Ms. Harris, in the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, has leaned heavily on Trump’s escalated rhetoric about his domestic political rivals, calling them “the enemy within.” When asked by Fox News’s Harris Faulker what he meant by that phrase, he specifically mentioned Speaker Pelosi and her family, as well as Congressman Adam Schiff, who led the investigation into Trump’s withholding of military aid from Ukraine that eventually led to his first impeachment. 

Trump’s allies have doubled down on those claims about domestic rivals. Congressman Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican who is close to Trump, told CNN on Wednesday that Mr. Schiff caused “total chaos” in America because of a “hoax” about Russian collusion in the 2016 race. “That is an enemy within,” Mr. Waltz said.