Elissa Slotkin wants to prosecute Republicans to warn young people off becoming conservative

Michigan Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin said Democrats should pursue prosecutions against officials in the Trump administration to discourage young people from working for conservatives.

The former CIA analyst argued that potential legal consequences could deter them from joining the administration out of fear that it would create “problems” for them.

Speaking at a University of Chicago event last week, Slotkin said Democrats need to “go after” officials in the Trump administration beyond Trump himself to send a message to young Americans.

“I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president but on the people who enabled him,” Slotkin said.

“I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun, I might get an opportunity,’” she said. “I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.’”

“I want that deterrence message sent,” she added.

Slotkin argued that Democrats would need to pursue selective cases rather than make investigations their entire focus.

“We do have to have accountability for the unbelievable corruption that we are living under right now,” she said. “But you can’t just make that your whole personality, right? So you have to pick signature cases, and you have to go after people and projects that are just super egregious.”

“The people around Donald Trump who are doing his bidding and enabling this have no such immunity. They have no immunity the way the president does,” she added. “And to me, he couldn’t do any of this stuff without all of those people saluting and supporting it. So you go after the people who do his bidding.”

The remarks follow a September speech Slotkin delivered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in which she called for Democrats to pursue Trump administration officials if they regain control of Congress. Slotkin compared it to authoritarian cleanups in Europe and identified former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum as examples of people to target.

“In Poland, they called this plan the Iron Broom, cleaning the place up,” Slotkin said. “The goal here is to have a list of signature cases that go after some of the most obvious and harmful abuses of taxpayer dollars.”

Last week, President Trump suggested that he could pardon officials who worked for him when he leaves office, including himself. He told Newsmax, “I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing.”