Donald J. Trump has long used strongman-style threats to take action against people he has offended as a campaign tactic, prompting his 2016 rally-goers to “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. And during his tenure as president, he repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to open investigations into his political opponents.
But as November approaches, the former president has stepped up his pledge to use the raw power of the state to impose and maintain control and to intimidate and punish anyone who works against him.
After Democrats replaced President Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as their 2024 nominee — and Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls shrank — Mr. Trump’s goals expanded.
He is laying the groundwork to claim massive voter fraud if he loses, a tactic familiar from his 2016 and 2020 playbooks, but this time coupled with threats of prosecution. Mr. Trump has announced that those facing criminal investigation for alleged attempts to rig the election will include election workers, a tech giant, political operatives, lawyers and donors working for his opponent.
Last month, he called former President Barack Obama “Military tribunals” and reposted fake photos of prominent Democrats dressed in prison garb. He has threatened Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with life imprisonment Helping state and local governments fund elections in 2020. He was afraid of scaring the voters Urging police officers to “watch for voter fraud” at polling stations Because some voters may be “fearing that badge” and warned that those deemed to have “frauded” the election “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“When I win, those who commit fraud will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including long prison terms so that this travesty of justice does not happen again,” Mr Trump said. wrote on its website Truth Social on Saturday.
He added: “Those involved in unethical behavior will be tracked down, caught and prosecuted. That level, unfortunately, has never been seen before in our country.
In his latest book, “Save America,” Mr. Trump threatened Mr. Zuckerberg, who in 2020, along with his wife, donated more than $400 million to nonpartisan groups that helped local election agencies deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, such as Expanding access to mail-in voting. Mr. Trump has mischaracterized that effort as an illegal contribution to the 2020 Biden campaign.
“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison,” Mr Trump wrote. (Amid Mr. Trump’s threats, which he has also posted on social media and delivered in interviews and at rallies, Mr. Zuckerberg has tried to smooth things over, describes The former president raised his fist, calling the assassination attempt “disgraceful” and saying he would not be involved this election cycle.)
Mr. Trump’s portrayal of his political opponents as election criminals is particularly compelling in light of his own record.
He has been convicted of 34 counts of altering business records to cover up hush-money payments in violation of campaign finance laws in the 2016 election, and has been charged in both federal and state courts with conspiring to fraudulently alter the 2020 election results. Whenever Mr. Trump’s own actions come under legal scrutiny, he casts law enforcement efforts as illegitimate and politicized.
In a statement, the Trump campaign defended its recent threats without pointing to any evidence of an ongoing conspiracy to commit major voter fraud.
“President Trump believes that anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who commit election fraud,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt said. “Without free and fair elections, you can’t have a country. Ask Venezuela.
Mr. Trump often likes to say that he should be prosecuted as a way to defame people, sometimes with no clear connection to any law. Among them: People involved in creating California laws aimed at protecting transgender studentsA A group of retired intelligence officers who signed in October 2020 A letter expressing his opinion The apparent Hunter Biden emails reported by The New York Post may be from a Russian intelligence operation, and Critics of conservative judges.
While some of what Mr. Trump has called for can be discounted as his usual extravagant, norm-busting rhetoric, his record in office suggests that other parts of what he is saying cannot be dismissed as incoherent or rhetorical.
As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to crack down on his political opponents, including Mrs. Clinton. At his request, the department opened a politically-tinged criminal investigation, from an investigation into Former Secretary of State John Kerry And no Former FBI Director James B. Comey Jr from An effort by the special counsel, John Durham, to find grounds to charge Obama-era national security officials or Mrs. Clinton with crimes related to the origins of the Russia investigation.
But to Mr. Trump’s chagrin, prosecutors ultimately found no evidentiary basis to bring charges against such figures.
Since Mr. Trump left office, several allies who have been on good terms with him — Jeffrey B. Including Clarke, a former Justice Department official who helped Mr. Trump try. Flip the 2020 election – has developed A blueprint Trump’s second term to make the department more systematically subject to direct White House controlErases the post-Watergate standard of Justice Department investigative independence.
And Mr. Trump has made clear that he plans to direct a Justice Department investigation if he gets a second term, beginning with A pledge to direct prosecutors to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family. He has also threatened criminal investigations of prosecutors who have brought allegations against him.
Mr. Trump’s aim to get rid of government coercion in the second administration is not limited to the Justice Department. He has Promised unilateral deployment of federal troops to local lands for several law enforcement purposesThat includes suppressing crime in big cities run by Democrats.
Mr. Trump’s view of “law and order” is conditional and often contradictory, depending on whether the criminals in question are viewed as friends or foes.
They seem to see the president’s pardon power as a tool to enforce laws — or not — on their own terms, from rewarding loyalists to achieving policy objectives. While in office, he urged his Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, Kevin McAleenan, to stop illegal asylum seekers from entering the country. assured him That he would pardon him if he went to jail for it — leaving panicked officials unsure whether the president was joking. He has called for the death penalty for drug dealers, but while in office he pardoned drug dealers and commuted their sentences. Highlighting His compassion for Alice Marie Johnson, a former drug dealer, featured in a high-profile campaign commercial.
He wants to release prosecutors to go after a wider range of people — but also to charge some prosecutors with crimes that offend him.
Mr. Trump has attacked black lawyers who investigated him in New York and Georgia said He will direct a “totally reformed” Justice Department to investigate every radical, out-of-control prosecutor in America for illegal, racist-subversive enforcement of the law.” He has repeated this threat at dozens of campaign stops.
At the same time, it has made it a point to call for local police officers to be immune from legal consequences or to pay damages if they break the law themselves while fighting crime. (In this vein, he has encouraged (Police officers would shoot shoplifters as they left the store—a brazen illegal act.)
Mr. Trump has posed for photos with police officers guarding his motorcade during campaign stops, including one while he was in Manhattan for his criminal hearing; His aides have posted the images on social media, signaling that the forces approve of him. Many police unions have endorsed Mr. Trump, and in Speech before the Fraternal Order of Police on FridayHe called on local law enforcement officials to send an intimidating message to voters to prevent perceived fraud by Democrats.
“I hope you can see — and you’re all over the place — look for voter fraud. Because we win — without voter fraud, we win easily,” Mr. Trump said. “Hopefully we win anyway. But we want to keep it down, you can keep it down just by looking at it. Because, believe me Believe it or not, they are afraid of that badge, they are afraid of your people.”
Mr. Trump also appears at times to have invoked vigilantism as another form of coercion. In the 2016 campaign he Offered to pay legal bills Any supporters who kill protesters at their rallies. Most recently, he has vowed to pardon supporters charged or convicted of crimes as part of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
When federal prosecutors last year Gag order sought They cited, preventing Mr. Trump from defaming those related to the election tampering case He has attacked the series of threats and other harassment suffered by election workers and othersSays he knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and organizations, he incites others to make threats and harassment against his targets.
Mr. Trump has displayed a lifelong view of the criminal justice system as a tool of state coercion used to impose order, not as a system in which innocence is presumed or restraint is ideal.
In 1989, when five black and Latino teenagers were accused of brutally raping a jogger in New York City’s Central Park, he New York State issued newspaper advertisements calling for the adoption of the death penalty. (The teenagers were later exonerated, and authorities discovered that police had coerced false confessions.) The following year, Mr. Trump expressed appreciation For how the Chinese Communist Party used its military and “power of might” to crush pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Mr. Trump has also talked about turning both federal law enforcement power and the threat of extrajudicial violence against members of the news media, which he has long vilified as “the enemy of the people.” He has often suggested prison rape as a means of motivation Politico reporters who obtained and published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision in 2022 That would end abortion rights to reveal their source.
“You get information very easily,” Mr. Trump said November 2022 rally. “You say to the reporter, ‘Who is it?’ And the reporter will tell you or not. And if the reporter doesn’t want to tell you, that’s bye-bye. The reporter goes to jail. And when the reporter finds out that he’s going to marry a certain inmate in two days, very strong and tough and meaningful, he’ll say, you know – he or she – ‘You know, I think I’m going to give You information. Here is the leaker. Get me out of here!’”
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