When has Trump threatened to imprison his opponents in the past?
The former president has floated the idea of prosecuting his political opponents on multiple occasions in the past.
At the start of his re-election campaign, Trump frequently raised the idea of prosecuting President Joe Biden.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,” Trump said in June at his Bedminster, New Jersey, residence, just hours after being arraigned at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.
However, Trump credited himself for not going after Clinton, saying it would have been “a terrible precedent for our country.”
“Some people said I should have done it, but, you know, could have, would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said. “And now, whoever it may be, you’re going to have to view it very much differently. This is a bad, bad road that they’re leading us down to as a country.”
More recently, Trump has continued to make threats against his opponents, writing: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” in an August 2023 Truth Social post.
Watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) also released a report last month analysing more than 13,000 messages published by Trump on his Truth Social platform and found him vowing revenge, retaliation and retribution against his foes.
According to the report, the presumptive Republican nominee has threatened to use the federal government to go after Biden during a second Trump administration 25 times since the start of 2023. These threats include FBI raids, investigations, indictments and even jail time.
He has also threatened or suggested that the FBI and justice department should take action against senators, judges, members of Biden’s family and even non-governmental organisations, as well as threatening people connected to the four criminal cases against him.
In one post about the special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump in cases including his alleged mishandling of classified documents, he warned that there will be “repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand” and, if the investigations continue, it will open a “Pandora’s Box” of retribution.
In another, Trump wrote that his federal indictments are “setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you.”
“He is promising to go after what he perceives to be his political enemies,” Robert Maguire, vice-president for research and data at Crew, said of Trump. “He is promising to essentially weaponise the government against anyone he sees as not sufficiently loyal or who is openly opposed to him.
“He has constantly seeded this idea that the numerous charges against him are trumped-up charges and it seems almost to have given him licence to openly say, ‘You’ve done this to me, so I’m going to do it to you.’”
