‘Can We Just Cut the Crap?’ Michael Steele Rips Trump Claiming He Was Not Involved In FBI Friday Night Purge

MSNBC’s Michael Steele is not buying President Donald Trump’s claim that he was not directly involved in a Friday night purge of FBI agents who worked on cases against him.

Dozens of agents who worked on the investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the now-dismissed classified documents case against Trump were fired on Friday, including the heads of 20 field offices. Critics have described the mass firings as a “purge,” Trump’s second Friday night “purge” of government officials since being in office.

On Saturday’s The Weekend, Steele called it “crap” that Trump was not behind the firings. NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly said he spoke to one of the fired agents and they “stand by what they did.”

“If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing, because they were very bad,” Trump told reporters, saying he was “not involved” in the firings.

Check out the MSNBC exchange below:

MICHAEL STEELE: “There’s just so much that I personally want to unpack on that and unload on that right now. But you’re our guest, I’m going to give you the chance to do that. But the reality of it is Trump said that, oh, I had no idea about these these firings. I didn’t request any of these firings. Can we just cut the crap? Because the FBI is not going to fire anybody at that scale without the White House knowing about it. What are you hearing about this process, the scope and the review of those people who are being let go and what are their options?”

RYAN REILLY: “Yeah, I spoke with one of the January 6th prosecutors who was fired just yesterday, last night, and, you know, they were saying they stand by what they did. And I think that, you know, what you got to remember here is he likes to talk in these generalities. In terms of like, oh, they you know, they went after people, this was this was corrupt. And let’s actually get into the details of these cases. These were cases against violent offenders who assaulted law enforcement officers on the steps of the US Capitol. Like right outside. Right. So it’s not as though you can say like, oh, we’re going after this specific person because we didn’t like how they applied this particular misdemeanor. No, they’re going after everyone. This was not like an individualized assessment of their conduct. This was just anybody who worked on January 6th cases who they could fire, they did. And that basically they focused on those people who were in these term positions. Basically, there was an authorization for these term positions, which were supposed to be sort of two years. The expectation was that a lot of these people would continue on. So basically, what you’re going to have Monday is that people who were working on these January 6th cases and then had been moved to some other kind of crime, right? So, like violent crime in DC, supposed to be a focus of the Trump administration, that’s what they were supposed to be doing. But, you know, they went through this training. They were supposed to show up Monday and start prosecuting these violent crime cases, and that’s it.”

Watch above via MSNBC.