(Newsweek) —
By Ewan Palmer
Steve Bannon has discussed plans to have federal departments like the Department of Justice be “purged” if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.
Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, named the DOJ and the FBI as two agencies that are at risk of being stripped down if Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is inaugurated as president on January 20, 2025.
The remarks made during an episode of Bannon’s WarRoom podcast echo proposals set out under Project 2025, a conservative guideline led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank on how the next conservative administration could dismantle the United States government and replace it with one more in line with Trump’s MAGA agenda, including an overhaul of the DOJ and taking steps to make it easier to fire federal workers.
The Democratic National Committee has accused the project of helping Trump “enact his dangerous agenda to be a ‘dictator on day one.'” In December 2023, Trump was asked at a Fox News town hall to promise not to “abuse power as retribution against anybody.” He replied, “Except for day one.”
Trump’s 2024 campaign has denied it is connected to the project or would even follow up on the ideas laid out in its 900-plus page manifesto.
“The DOJ is completely corrupt from top to bottom. It’s going to have to be purged. It’s going to have to be restructured,” Bannon said, adding the agency will need to get rid of “lots of personnel” on January 20.
“And the FBI is the American Gestapo. As institutions, they are not worthy of going forward. That’s going to have to totally be restructured. I’ve been strongly for getting rid of the FBI. starting over again with some federal law enforcement to the degree you need it,” he said.
Newsweek reached out to Bannon and Trump’s office via email for comment.
President Joe Biden‘s 2024 campaign shared a clip of Bannon’s remarks on social media, paraphrasing his words.
“Steve Bannon on Project 2025: We are going to purge the federal government of those who don’t support Trump. We will restructure the Justice Department to prosecute our political opponents,” Biden’s team posted on X, formerly Twitter.
In reply, The Lincoln Project, an anti-Donald Trump Republican super PAC, wrote: “Project 2025 isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. It’s the MAGA extremists’ plan to purge and replace the government with Trump loyalists who will enable Trump to act out his worst authoritarian tendencies.”
The Lincoln Project also shared an ad that called Project 2025 “Trump’s plan to make America different, less free, less fair, less America. It’s a roadmap for total control, Trump’s control.”
In November 2023, Trump’s campaign told Axios that it is not following Project 2025’s initiative and that the package of proposals known as Agenda47 is the “only official comprehensive and detailed look at what President Trump will do when he returns to the White House.”
Axios suggested that Project 2025 is “undeniably a Trump-driven operation” and noted that former Trump White House aide Johnny McEntee is a senior adviser to it.
“Donald Trump is running on the extreme and unpopular Project 2025 agenda, plain and simple—and there is nothing Trump or his allies can say to distance themselves from this losing platform,” DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said in an April statement.
“Project 2025 is being run by Trump allies, modeled after Trump’s words, and designed to allow Trump to enact his dangerous agenda to be a ‘dictator on day one.’ The truth is, Trump will have nobody to blame but himself—and his out-of-touch MAGA allies like the Heritage Foundation—when the American people make him a loser again this November.”
