Trump issues threats to prosecute political rivals : NPR

With just two weeks remaining until the presidential election, former President Donald Trump has used his most recent appearances on podcast and cable interviews to escalate attacks on fellow Americans whom he calls “the enemy from within.”

In one recent interview, Trump said that if “radical left lunatics” disrupt the election, “it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

That statement, on Fox News, was not the first time Trump has expressed support for using government force against domestic political rivals. Since 2022, when he began preparing for the presidential campaign, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, NPR has found.

A review of Trump’s rally speeches, press conferences, interviews and social media posts shows that the former president has repeatedly indicated that he would use federal law enforcement as part of a campaign to exact “retribution.”

Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted,” Trump said at a rally last month.

“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 last year.

“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” reads one post Trump reposted on his social media site, Truth Social, regarding the former Republican congresswoman. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”

Journalists who decline to identify the sources of leaked information would also face imprisonment, Trump said.

“If the reporter doesn’t want to tell you, it’s ‘bye-bye,’ the reporter goes to jail,” Trump said in 2022. He appeared to suggest that the reporter could also face sexual assault while in custody.

Trump and his allies have either downplayed these threats, or said that these actions would be justified, in part, because of the four criminal prosecutions brought against Trump since he left office. In one of those cases, a New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts in connection with hush money he paid to keep an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels secret. He is appealing that verdict.

When right-wing radio host Glenn Beck asked Trump if he would lock up his opponents in a second term, Trump responded, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.”

Legal experts said that there are few guardrails preventing Trump from pursuing his plans to prosecute opponents and noted that Trump pressured the Department of Justice to investigate rivals during his first term. In about a dozen cases, the Justice Department followed through and initiated investigations, according to one analysis.

If Trump follows through on his stated plans in a second term, these experts said, his actions could endanger Americans’ civil liberties and cause a chilling effect on criticism of the president. The threats he’s made have already led some of his targets to prepare for the worst by saving money and considering whether to leave the country if Trump wins the election.

“This is how autocrats cement their permanent grip on power,” said Ian Bassin, the executive director of the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which advocates for protections against authoritarianism.

Many of Trump’s threats relate to his persistent false claims about election fraud and the lie that he won the 2020 election.

“START ARRESTING THE POLL WORKERS AND WATCH HOW FAST THEY TELL YOU WHO TOLD THEM TO CHEAT,” reads a message Trump reposted on social media in 2023.

He has also repeatedly targeted the prosecutors, judges and even courtroom staff connected to the prosecutions against him for alleged election interference, improperly holding classified documents and business fraud.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron “should be arrested and punished accordingly,” Trump said at a rally in January. James successfully brought a civil fraud case against Trump, which Engoron presided over. Trump is appealing the judgment against him. He also reposted a message attacking a member of the Georgia grand jury that indicted him.

Among the other targets of Trump’s threats are former President Barack Obama (“RETRUTH IF YOU WANT PUBLIC MILITARY TRIBUNALS”), members of the U.S. Capitol Police who defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot (“The cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed”), members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee in Congress (“They should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!”), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison”), people who criticize the Supreme Court (“These people should be put in jail, the way they talk about our judges and our justices”) and protesters who burn the American flag (“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you desecrate the American flag”).

In one instance, Trump suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his administration, could face execution for calling officials in China to try and defuse tensions in the chaotic aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

“This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Milley, who retired in 2023, has since told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”

In addition to using the powers under criminal law, Trump has also promised to take greater control of agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcast television and radio, including NPR’s network of member stations.

After his presidential debate against Harris on ABC News, Trump called for the FCC to revoke ABC’s broadcast license, due to his perception of the moderators’ bias. He also called for an investigation of CBS News for campaign finance violations after it aired an interview with Vice President Harris. He’s previously floated pulling the license for NBC, as well, over criticisms of its news coverage.

“I absolutely think he will follow up on those threats,” said Stephanie Grisham, who worked for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as his White House press secretary. Grisham resigned in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has since become a vocal critic of her former boss.

“I just know that once he’s in office with no guardrails, no reason to worry about reelection, and only the most fervent, loyal people surrounding him,” Grisham said, “he will absolutely make sure his enemies pay for what he perceives to be their crimes.”

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump White House, said at an event earlier this year that he believed Trump would use the Department of Justice to enact a “retribution presidency.”

In response to NPR’s reporting, the Republican National Committee issued a statement.

“Kamala Harris is the threat to democracy,” said RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly. “She and Joe Biden weaponized our justice system in order to sway an election.”

Trump’s claims of a “witch hunt”

Amid this flood of threats against his opponents, Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the Justice Department and subjecting him to “political persecution” and a “witch hunt.”

Judges presiding over Trump’s criminal cases have rejected those arguments.

Biden did state publicly that subjects of the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s investigation should face prosecution for defying subpoenas. He later said that comment was “inappropriate.” But there’s no evidence that Biden has directed the federal cases against Trump. Those cases are being led by special counsel Jack Smith.

During Biden’s presidency, the Justice Department has also brought prosecutions against several high-profile Democrats, including former New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez and New York Mayor Eric Adams, as well as the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

Vice President Harris has generally avoided commenting on Trump’s federal criminal cases. When supporters at recent campaign rallies started chanting “lock him up,” she told the crowd, “We’re gonna let the courts handle that.”

Could Trump actually order prosecutions of his enemies?

After the widespread abuses of presidential power by Richard Nixon, subsequent administrations generally sought to give the Department of Justice more independence from the White House, in part to insulate the agency from electoral politics.

But legal experts and former government officials said those rules and norms can be overturned or ignored.

“There are not really legal restrictions or even structural restrictions that would stop the president, if he were to appoint loyalists to be the lead prosecutors in all 93 jurisdictions around the country, from simply directing them to go and investigate his perceived opponents,” said Bassin, who also served as associate White House counsel in the Obama administration. “If he appointed a loyal director of the FBI, he would be able to make life pretty miserable for the people he is targeting.”

Trump has said he will appoint the “most ferocious legal warriors against crime and Communist corruption that this country has ever seen.”

Trump’s allies have also promised to weaken or even end the Justice Department’s independence from the White House if he returns to office, which would give Trump and his political appointees greater ability to direct the federal prosecutions.

“The president has the authority under the Constitution to conduct law enforcement,” Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official and a leader of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, told NPR last year. Vought added that “I think you can absolutely trust Donald Trump” not to use the Justice Department for partisan purposes.

The Supreme Court also recently removed one potential guardrail preventing political prosecutions in its ruling on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.

“One of the most remarkable lines in that Supreme Court opinion is that a sitting president could order their Justice Department to engage in a ‘sham’ investigation,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University. “So a president would not have to fear criminal accountability for ordering a sham investigation of their perceived enemies.”

One final check against political prosecutions is the judicial branch. Judges can refuse to authorize search and arrest warrants. If an investigation leads to an actual prosecution, judges can also dismiss charges and juries can acquit defendants. But the process alone can do significant damage to a target’s reputation and finances, regardless of the final outcome. And both Trump and running mate JD Vance have suggested they might ignore the judiciary’s decisions.

Trump posted on Truth Social that “massive fraud” in the 2020 election justified “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” In a 2021 interview, Vance said Trump should ignore court rulings if they constrain the administration’s ability to replace career officials with political loyalists.

“Much of this depends upon the character of the individual in the White House and the character of those surrounding them,” said Goodman, “because there’s so many levers of power that they can use.”

Trump’s actions in his first term

Trump made the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival in the 2016 election, a centerpiece of his first presidential campaign. “Lock her up” became a perennial call-and-response between Trump and his supporters at rallies.

And while the Justice Department under Trump did not ultimately charge Clinton, there’s substantial evidence that his pressure on prosecutors did have an impact in some cases.

“President Trump treated the Department of Justice like his own personal law firm, and he put people in charge there who did his bidding,” said Geoffrey Berman, who served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York during the Trump administration, in a 2022 interview with WHYY’s Fresh Air. “The Justice Department targeted political enemies of the president and assisted political allies of the president.”

One of Trump’s most frequent targets in his first term was Andrew McCabe, a longtime FBI official who became the bureau’s acting director when Trump fired James Comey in 2017.

While in office, Trump attempted to “purge” the FBI of people he perceived as disloyal, McCabe said in an interview.

Trump repeatedly attacked McCabe, because he was in the leadership of the FBI during the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election and because he perceived McCabe as a partisan enemy. McCabe considered himself a moderate Republican, but Trump seized on the fact that McCabe’s wife had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate in 2015 as a Democrat.

Trump publicly pressured the department to fire McCabe before he would be eligible to receive retirement benefits, writing on Twitter, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”

“It was clear to me, he was basically saying, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can to fire this guy before he can retire,’” McCabe said.

Department of Justice leaders demoted and then fired McCabe just hours before that deadline.

“Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI,” Trump posted. “A great day for Democracy.”

Internal investigators at the Justice Department said that McCabe “lacked candor” about his contacts with journalists — an allegation McCabe denies — and federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into McCabe that dragged on for nearly two years.

McCabe said he was with his wife and two children when the news of the criminal investigation leaked.

“It was just an incredibly sad moment and really scary for them, because it was the first time that I think they had ever considered that what had been political nonsense might actually cost me my liberty,” McCabe said. “And it’s also humiliating. It’s embarrassing.”

Federal Judge Reggie Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, questioned prosecutors over their handling of the case and Trump’s apparent influence over it.

“I don’t think people like the fact that you got somebody at the top basically trying to dictate whether somebody should be prosecuted,” Walton said. “I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road.”

Prosecutors ultimately dropped the case without bringing charges.

McCabe sued the Department of Justice over his firing. After Trump left office, he received a settlement that restored his back pay, retirement benefits and rank.

McCabe was not the only target, according to an analysis co-written by Goodman. He found 11 other cases in which Trump pushed the Justice Department to investigate his rivals.

“There is an established track record of Trump having done this before,” said Goodman of NYU. “It’s not pure rhetoric.”

In one instance described in the Mueller report and cited by Goodman, Trump urged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton. (Trump also urged prosecution publicly on Twitter.) Federal prosecutors in Utah later opened an investigation into Clinton and the Clinton Foundation without bringing charges. Hillary Clinton remained one of Trump’s most frequent targets even after he left office. Last year, he reposted a video with calls to “lock her up” for alleged treason.

The Jan. 6 Select Committee in Congress presented additional evidence of Trump putting pressure on prosecutors to say they found widespread fraud in the 2020 election, despite a lack of evidence.

“What I’m just asking you to do is to say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” Trump told officials in his Justice Department, according to testimony obtained by the select committee.

“Trump was absolutely willing to use the Justice Department for his ends,” former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the select committee, told NPR.

Preparing for the worst

Trump continues to threaten McCabe.

Steve Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and remains a prominent supporter, said on his podcast that McCabe “should be worried” that Trump would go after him if he returns to the White House.

“You should be very worried,” Bannon said. “But also understand this, brother, we have extradition treaties with virtually every country in the world. And you go ahead and run and run as far as you want. We’re going to come and get you.” (Bannon is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress and is due to be released at the end of October.)

Trump reposted Bannon’s comments on Truth Social.

“It shows you, I think, and in serious terms, a persistent commitment to this idea of ‘we are going on the revenge tour,’” McCabe said in response to those comments.

McCabe said he has had difficult conversations with his family about what Trump might do if he returns to the White House, and he knows other former officials who are also contemplating leaving the country.

“I don’t intend to leave the country that I served for 21 years,” McCabe said. “But this kind of pits you against your children and your spouses who just want you to be safe.”

Grisham said she is also making preparations in case Trump returns to the White House — and saving up money.

Trump has not threatened her with jail time or prosecution, but did attack her in personal terms after she published a book critical of the administration.

“I’m definitely fearful for myself and for many of my friends who have spoken out, too,” Grisham said. “It’s a terrifying thought, because that is literally the most powerful person in the world that knows you and wants only bad for you. It’s truly a terrifying thought.”