Trump suggests he would use FBI to go after
political rivals if elected in 2024
Trump said: ‘If I happen to be president and I see
somebody doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them’
Sam Levine
Fri 10 Nov
2023 11.09 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/10/trump-fbi-rivals-2024-election
Donald
Trump has suggested he would use the FBI and justice department to go after
political rivals should he return to the White House next year in a move which
will further stoke fears of what a second period of office for Trump could
mean.
Trump made
the comments during an interview with the Spanish-language television network
Univision. The host Enrique Acevedo asked him about his flood of legal problems
saying: “You say they’ve weaponized the justice department, they weaponized the
FBI. Would you do the same if you’re re-elected?”
“They’ve
already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could
certainly happen in reverse,” Trump replied. “They’ve released the genie out of
the box.
“When
you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go
after them so you can win an election. They’ve done indictments in order to win
an election. They call it weaponization,” Trump added. “But yeah they have done
something that allows the next party, I mean if somebody, 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.
They’d be out of the election.”
Prosecuting
political rivals is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and Trump’s remarks are
the most candid public revelations so far of the anti-democratic power he would
bring to a second term as president.
The former
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is challenging Trump but has lagged in
the polls, said the remarks were alarming. “This is outrageous,” he said on CNN
on Thursday evening.
He also
warned that unlike Trump’s first presidential term, there would not be lawyers
and other officials around Trump to stop his most authoritarian pushes. Trump
allies are already preparing an effort to install far-right attorneys in the
federal government who can back up Trump’s fringe ideas.
“You had
good folks like Bill Barr who were keeping him on the rails and stopping him
from doing stuff like this at the justice department,” Christie said. “Nobody
as good and decent and honest as Bill Barr is gonna agree to be Donald Trump’s
attorney general if he ever becomes president again.”
The
comments also drew rebuke from a CNN panel on Friday morning, which implored
Americans not to shrug off Trump’s remarks.
Even before
Trump’s Univision interview aired on Thursday, the former secretary of state
Hillary Clinton said Trump was clearly telegraphing an authoritarian agenda if
he returns to the White House and compared him to Adolf Hitler.
“Trump is
telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word,” she said on ABC’s The
View.
“Those
aren’t flippant ‘ha-ha funny’ remarks,” Phil Mattingly, CNN’s chief White House
correspondent said on air on Friday. “That’s insane.” Elie Honig, the network’s
chief legal analyst, agreed and said Americans should “take him at his word”.
“If he says he’s gonna do this, I believe him.”
Trump is
the overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican race for the 2024 nomination and
no rival has yet emerged to seriously challenge him. In recent national polls
against Joe Biden, Trump has also frequently been shown to be ahead – unnerving
many Democrats.
He faces a
suite of lawsuits in key swing states, including Colorado, Minnesota and
Michigan, seeking to bar him from running because of his responsibility for the
January 6 attack on the Capitol. The suits argue that section 3 of the 14th
amendment bars anyone who previously took an oath to the United States from
holding office if they have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the US
constitution.
The
Minnesota supreme court ruled this week that the state could not block him from
appearing on the primary ballot, but left the door open to future challenges.
Part of the
reason the challengers are bringing these cases is because of the threat a
second Trump presidency poses to the US constitution.
“The
dangers are not merely theoretical. We saw what happened on January 6 2021 and
if he’s allowed back into power that might be child’s play compared to what
he’ll do in the future,” Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for
People, a left-leaning group behind several of the challenges, told the
Guardian last week.
The
Washington Post reported earlier this month that Trump and his allies were
already discussing how to use the justice department to prosecute and exact
revenge against people who have spoken out against Trump, including former
attorney general Bill Barr and his former chief of staff John Kelly.
He is also
reportedly considering invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in
office, should he win, which would allow him to deploy the military against
domestic protesters.
Trump faces
four separate criminal cases, including two different federal ones dealing with
his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the election.
Both of those cases were brought by Jack Smith, a justice department special
counsel appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to insulate the
cases from political pressure.
If Trump
wins the election, he would almost certainly fire Smith if the investigation is
still ongoing, or pardon himself if he has been convicted.
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