How Trump Would Weaponize the Justice Department
The former president has repeatedly tried to prosecute his political opponents, whom he dubs “the enemy within.” In a second term, he actually could.
Looking for a few good yes-men.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesFormer President Donald Trump has made it clear what he’d like to do with the Department of Justice if he’s reelected: go after his political opponents. As he has posted on social media, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED” — Democrats, in his dark fantasy of election fraud — “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.” It would be foolish to dismiss such promises as mere bluster.
Trump’s words echo refrains from his first administration, when the former president used social media to call for the prosecutions of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Barack Obama, James Comey, and members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Ilhan Omar. For example, in July 2017, Trump posted, “So many people are asking why isn’t the A.G. or Special Council (sic) looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?”