Topline
President elect Donald Trump last year suggested he would use the FBI and Justice Department to attack his political rivals if he secured a return to the White House, which could see him go after people like President Joe Biden, former attorney general Bill Barr and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith.
Key Facts
Months after he’d been indicted in four separate cases on charges of business fraud, mishandling of classified documents and election interference—indictments he has baselessly claimed were orchestrated by President Joe Biden to an “attempt to rig and steal an election”—Trump suggested he could use federal agencies to prosecute his political rivals if he returned to office.
In an interview with Spanish-language television network Univision last November, Trump said “it could certainly happen” and that his indictments “released the genie out of the box.”
He again claimed his indictments were part of an election-rigging scheme and said, “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, mostly they would be out of business. They’d be out.”
In an interview with Fox News in October, Trump suggested the armed forces could be used as a potential weapon against opponents and has repeatedly said he is concerned with “the enemy from within.”
Trump over the summer shared posts on his social media site, Truth Social, calling for “televised military tribunals” of political opponents, specifically former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who has spoken out against him.
Before his second term victory Tuesday, Trump and his allies had been hashing out plans for how to use the federal government to punish critics and opponents, The Washington Post reported, and Trump had reportedly told advisors and friends he wanted to go after one-time allies who’d become critical of his time in office.
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Who Has Trump Threatened To Prosecute?
Publicly, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and “the entire Biden crime family” for corruption accusations Trump has made without evidence. At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump baselessly called for Vice President Kamala Harris to “be impeached and prosecuted for her actions” in reference to illegal border crossings. He has accused former president Barack Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former FBI Director James Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of treason (there is no evidence for the claims). Trump has said he will fire Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor leading the cases against him for election interference and mishandling of documents, and also said Bragg, who led a grand jury to bring the first ever criminal charges against a former president, “should be prosecuted or at a minimum he should resign.” Trump threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with “life in prison” if he did “anything illegal” related to the election, and has said he may instruct the Department of Justice to criminally investigate Google for promoting negative stories about him. Other potential targets for retribution include Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who said he fit the definition of “fascist” and preferred a “dictator approach” to leadership; Barr, who vouched for the strength of the Trump indictments and compared Trump to a “defiant 9-year-old kid;” ex-attorney Ty Cobb, who publicly said Trump “doesn’t stand for anything but pure ambition;” and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, who called the former president “fascist to the core.” Before Tuesday’s election, Trump threatened lawyers, donors, voters and election officials with prosecution if they were caught participating in “unscrupulous behavior” related to the election. Trump also said he wants to work with Congress to mandate jail time for anyone who desecrates the American flag, comments that came after pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.
Crucial Quote
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said in June after an arraignment in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”
Key Background
Prosecution of political rivals is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, and for a president to impose control over the Justice Department would be a major shift from decades of past practice of agency independence. The Justice Department has been largely independent of the White House since a series of major reforms following President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, but a second Trump term could change that. Two of Trump’s allies, Jeffrey Clark and Russell Vought of the right-wing Center for Renewing America, have pushed for an administration in which the Justice Department is treated no differently than any other cabinet position and the president could direct individual investigations, The New York Times reported. Clark, a key figure in an investigation into one of Trump’s 2020 election interference cases, is likely to be appointed to the DOJ now that Trump has won. Vought said in a statement to the Times that “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.” In an April interview, Trump said he would be open to firing U.S. Attorneys who refused his orders to prosecute someone.
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