Donald Trump, spinning the old, false line that the trial that led to his conviction on felony charges was "rigged" and orchestrated by Joe Biden, suggested in an interview with Newsmax that the "precedent" would give him an opening pay his political opponents back in kind, according to the Washington Post.
“I said, ‘Wouldn’t it really be bad? … Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state — think of it, the former secretary of state — but the president’s wife into jail?” Trump mused on Tuesday, referring to his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, who he had repeatedly said should be "locked up" despite now blaming his supporters for saying it instead.
“But they want to do it,” Trump said, apparently referring to Biden and other political rivals. “So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them ... it's a terrible precedent for the country."
The precedent Trump was referring to was his imagined version of events, in which President Biden supposedly instructed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to prosecute him, and then rigged the trial secure a conviction. Despite making this claim for several months now, Trump has been unable to cite any evidence to suggest that Bragg, an independently elected prosecutor, coordinated with the White House at all. Prosecutors said that they were only following the facts in their case.
Trump, who faces criminal charges in three other cases, has made revenge a central message of his campaign, telling supporters at one point that "I am your retribution." Other times, he has vacillated, saying in an Iowa rally that he "didn't have time for retribution." Since he first ran for president in 2015, Trump has called for the Justice Department to investigate political opponents and former allies who are now critical of him; in the lead up to the 2024 election, he has a plan to make that a reality by purging DOJ staff turning the department into what Reuters referred to as "an attack dog for conservative causes."
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