Donald Trump on Thursday said he could order the Dept. of Justice to "indict" his opponents if he wins back the White House next year, leading critics to issue warnings.
"On Thursday, in an interview with Univision, Trump again made explicit what is often implicit in his vengeance-fuelled campaign: his willingness to use the justice system to go after his opponents if he is returned to the White House," The New Yorker's Susan B. Glasser reports. "Any other prospective President would have denied with all possible force a recent Washington Post report that Trump has already demanded that his aides make plans to target some former advisers who have become public critics, including his former chief of staff John Kelly, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley."
"Instead, Trump all but confirmed the story when he told the Spanish-language network that he would use the courts against his political rivals. '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,’ ' Trump told Univision. 'They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.' "
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The Washington Post reports, "Trump says on Univision he could weaponize FBI, DOJ against his enemies," while The New York Times' Peter Baker called it: "A signal from Trump that did not get much attention."
Others are using far-stronger language.
Despite Baker's remarks, Trump literally told supporters at a rally this week he is planning to weaponize the DOJ against his opponents.
Trump: And we will together restore law and order in our country. We will completely overhaul the doj to investigate every marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal racist in the reverse enforcement.. pic.twitter.com/eftLSe9vX5
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 4, 2023
And as Glasser points out in The New Yorker, this isn't new.
"There should be no surprise in this, of course. When Trump ran in 2016, he promised to jail his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and laughed and cheered and egged on his crowds when they chanted, 'Lock her up! Lock her up!'"
Others, like The Washington Post's Carol Leaning, point out that not only are Trump's vows to weaponize DOJ against his opponents not new, he actually did it when he was President.
"It's not just Donald Trump projecting possibly what we think he would like to do in a Justice Dept. in the future," Leaning said on MSNBC on Tuesday. "It's what he actually did when he was president.
“It's not just Trump projecting what he would like to do in the Justice Dept. in the future. It is what he actually did when he was President, he did interfere multiple times in the DOJ’s work. He did bully and pressure both of his AG's” @CarolLeonnig w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/NSwu84HRuS
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) November 7, 2023
Meanwhile, some critics are taking a deeper look at Trump, who Glasser calls, "a man who is running on an explicit platform of revenge, retribution, and Constitution-termination." And, as she observes, the warnings are "getting louder."
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Focused on Trump's promise to order DOJ indictments, former Tea Party Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, now a strong Trump critic who hosts "White Flag with Joe Walsh," called it "fascism."
"This is what a fascist dictator does. This is fascism. In his own words, he’s telling you how fascist he will be," Walsh warned.
Max Boot, the Washington Post columnist, writes, "Don’t say you weren’t warned. Like many aspiring dictators, Trump makes no secret of his authoritarian agenda. But many people either don’t believe him or don’t care."
Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias adds, "Trump has been very clear that he intends to corrupt all the levers of the state in improper ways."
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