'It reminds us of the need to clean house at these agencies': DeSantis and other Republicans react to Durham report by decrying weaponization of government

Republicans decried the weaponization of government on Monday in response to the release of Special Counsel John Durham's report.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to jump into the presidential race soon, was among those who commented on the matter.

"The Durham Report confirmed what we already knew: weaponized federal agencies manufactured a false conspiracy theory about Trump-Russia collusion. It reminds us of the need to clean house at these agencies, as they've never been held accountable for this egregious abuse of power," DeSantis tweeted.

GOP presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley also issued statements mentioning government weaponization.

"The Durham Report is a scathing indictment of the FBI & my proposal to shut it down is pragmatic: just as local prosecutors don’t require a separate investigative agency to work with local police, neither should the DOJ require an FBI to work with U.S. Marshals. Bureaucracy is a formula for corruption. It’s time to end the weaponization of police power in America once and for all," Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted.

"The Durham report is damning evidence of the rot in our government. No party, no politician should weaponize government to go after political opponents. There must be consequences or this will never end," tweeted Nikki Haley, who is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former South Carolina governor.

Various GOP lawmakers also commented on the issue.

"The gravity of the misconduct uncovered by Mr. Durham cannot be overstated," Sen. Mike Lee of Utah tweeted. "The LEAST one can say of it is that it involved a malicious use of federal law-enforcement officers to conduct a contrived investigation utterly lacking any valid, factual foundation from the very beginning. That is itself incredibly troubling—and also unconstitutional," he added. "But this was SO MUCH WORSE than that. It was an effort to use use a powerful, long-respected, federal law-enforcement agency to render a presidential candidate unelectable—entirely in the absence of any valid, good-faith basis for doing so," Lee wrote.

"The long-awaited Durham Report confirmed what the American people already know; that individuals at the highest levels of government attempted to overthrow democracy when they illegally weaponized the federal government against Donald J. Trump," Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said in a statement. "Crossfire Hurricane was nothing more than an illegal, unlawful, and unAmerican abuse of power," she declared.

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