Trump's vows for revenge face few limitations in second term

Former President Trump’s campaign for the White House has been marked by several vows to go after his critics and perceived “enemies” if he wins in November.

Trump has in many ways ratcheted up that rhetoric as Election Day approaches, prompting figures on both sides of the aisle to sound the alarm about how the former president might use power to target his opponents. 

“There's never been a set of threats like this made by a candidate for president of the United States. Trump didn't just let it slip out once; he talks about it incessantly. He has a vendetta against people that he believes have crossed him,” said Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Department of Justice.

“He's talking about it and talking about it all the time. He's naming specific people who he thinks are the enemy within. ... So it's a challenge that our system has never encountered before,” Bromwich said.

Worries that Trump might follow up on his threats are aggravated by the former president’s stated plans to stock a potential second administration with loyalists who wouldn’t challenge him the way some did in his first term.

He would also enter office in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that largely protects former executives like him from being prosecuted for core presidential actions.

Still, there are limitations on what Trump could do if he wanted to seek revenge in office, though his attempts could also create headaches for those seen as his enemies.

“Unfortunately, Supreme Court has kind of made it pretty straightforward for him to direct his attorney general to do pretty much anything he wants without there being any real oversight or scrutiny, either from the legislative or judicial branches,” said Ankush Khardori, a former Justice Department prosecutor who analyzed Trump’s pathways for a “revenge tour.”

“On the other side of that, there are a whole bunch of checks that are still fairly robust within the judicial system, including grand juries, trial juries, trial judges, appellate judges, and even the Supreme Court.”

The volume of the volley of threats

Trump has issued threats to everyone from politicos to prosecutors, most recently referring to his opponents as “the enemy within” and that any unrest from his critics after the election “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

While each of Trump’s threats often receive significant media coverage, their volume in total until recently have won less attention. 

According to a review by NPR, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to prosecute or generally punish his perceived adversaries since he began organizing his campaign in 2022.

Another review of more than 13,000 of Trump’s Truth Social posts from January 1, 2023, to April 1, 2024, found that Trump threatened to go after or prosecute President Biden at least 25 times. The analysis was conducted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Trump seems to welcome the association of retribution with his campaign. In December last year he shared a word cloud assembled by the Daily Mail after it asked readers how they would describe a second Trump and Biden term. 

The top word for Trump: Revenge.

An eye toward political opponents and many more

As recently as Thursday, Trump again used violent imagery when talking about a political opponent.

At an event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump criticized former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as a “radical war hawk.”

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said.

Trump’s camp said his comments referred to the willingness of Cheney and others to send soldiers to war and that he was referring to her being in combat. Other observers saw the “nine barrels” part of Trump’s remarks as a clear reference to a firing squad.

Trump has also said his opponent Vice President Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted.”

The former president has in recent weeks specifically referenced former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, when referring to his opponents as “the enemy from within.” 

In June, Trump wrote on his social media site that he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and the “entire Biden crime family.” Biden’s son Hunter Biden is already being prosecuted by a special counsel.

Trump has also gone after those prosecuting him, suggesting Smith should be arrested and calling him a criminal. He also reposted a photo of Smith alongside the text: “He should be prosecuted for election interference & prosecutorial misconduct.”

“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump wrote.

One of Trump’s most concrete threats came in September, when he posted on Truth Social that anyone deemed to have “cheated” in the election would face prosecution.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED 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,” Trump posted.

At a campaign stop in 2022, Trump also called for jailing journalists who do not disclose the identity of leakers, saying, “If the reporter doesn't want to tell you, it's bye-bye, the reporter goes to jail.”

Trump has called for using the Justice Department to pursue any organizations that aid newly arrived migrants.

“For any radical left charity, non-profit, or so called aid organizations supporting these caravans and illegal aliens, we will prosecute them for their participation in human trafficking, child smuggling, and every other crime we can find,” he said last year.

In other cases, he’s promoted social media posts from supporters that call for charges against Smith, as well as Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis (D), Manhattan Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), and Attorney General Merrick Garland, suggesting each could be charged under a second Trump administration. 

He’s also made other veiled threats, saying Cheney and others who served on the Jan. 6 committee “should go to jail.” He reposted an image on Truth Social earlier this year saying Cheney should face a military tribunal.

DOJ as a tool, the justice system as a roadblock 

Trump has publicly fumed about the way his first two attorneys general pushed back against his inclinations, including efforts to investigate his rivals. If elected, he’s expected to pick Justice Department officials willing to advance the prosecutions and investigations he’s called for.

“It seems like given his desire to seek retribution … he'll want to select a very pliant and compliant attorney general who, unlike Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, had limits to what they would do in carrying out the agenda,” Bromwich said.

“I have a little doubt that Trump and his White House staff would try to get the Justice Department to do all sorts of things that an attorney general should never even consider doing like beginning investigations of other public officials with no factual predicate, who haven’t done anything wrong.”

Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who is now fighting to keep his law license after agreeing under the first Trump administration to forward the president’s baseless claims of election fraud, is seen as a contender.

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Khardori that conservative prosecutors serving under a Trump DOJ could resist bringing unwarranted charges.

“I hope that’s true,” Khardori said.

Regardless of whether DOJ staff go along with such demands, there are other roadblocks, Khardori said. These include the obligation to lay out what crimes were committed by those Trump might seek to punish.

“It's not like there's one safety valve in the criminal justice system, there are multiple safety valves. The prosecutors can refuse to go along. The grand jury can refuse to go along. The judge can ask questions and dismiss the charges. The trial attorney can refuse to go along — acquit you. Appellate judges can overturn convictions,” he said.

Trump did face pushback during his first administration when he sought to push for investigations into rivals — something he did at least a dozen times, according to a Just Security analysis.

That appears to be the case with Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI. While the Justice Department did launch an investigation, a grand jury assembled in the case failed to forward charges, bucking expectations of a panel that frequently approve indictments.

Still, the checks and balances of the judiciary were of little comfort to Cecilia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I think if there's one lesson from Trump's presidency that we all learned, it’s that it takes an entire country to check the power of a president who is trying to abuse his power,” she said.

“We rely entirely too much on normative standards for presidential conduct, and what we need are hard legal constraints on the abuse of presidential power.”

Khardori and Bromwich both agreed that even if Trump faces constraints within the justice system for his plans for retribution, investigations alone can be a form of revenge.

“Sometimes people say the process is the punishment. Even an investigation that ultimately goes nowhere that does not result in charges against you, but takes a year or two can be incredibly destabilizing,” Khardori said.

Bromwich noted they are also not carried out in a vacuum.

“The expense and the trauma of defending yourself at the investigative stage is enormous,” said Bromwich, who defended McCabe during his criminal probe.

“Many of Trump's supporters will, of course, jump on the bandwagon and threaten acts of violence against those people. That’s already happening. Public servants have had to hire private security to protect themselves and their families. So the president and his attorney general have the ability to create an absolute monstrous threat to people who haven't done anything wrong.”

Trump has also made clear he would use the Justice Department to his personal benefit in another way, saying in an interview last week that he would fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office, effectively kneecapping the ongoing federal cases against him.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in the immunity case condoned Trump’s use of the Justice Department for his own ends, concluding his pressure campaign at DOJ is off limits from prosecutors in Smith’s Jan. 6 case.

But in a minority opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared the ruling would broadly shield Trump from abusing his authority in any number of ways, whether assassinating a rival or accepting bribes.

Bromwich said the opinion undercuts the warnings of staff who in the past cautioned Trump that acting on various impulses could backfire.

“They're not going to be able to credibly say that anymore, because it's really not going to be risky for him,” Bromwich said.

“I think he understands that the shackles that may have existed and that people assumed had existed for the entire history of this country no longer exists, and that he doesn't need to worry about criminal prosecution, that he can do anything he wants without the fear of prosecution.”

Other levers of government

Trump’s plans for carrying out revenge are not just limited to the Department of Justice.

The former president has in recent days revived one of his favorite types of threats: To strip broadcast networks of their licenses because of coverage he disapproves of.

Trump has gone on a multiweek tirade against CBS after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Harris that did not contain a lengthy answer on Israel that had been shown in a preview clip. Republicans seized on the discrepancy to claim the program had edited the interview in a way favorable to Harris.

“Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal. TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.”

Trump in September had similarly called for ABC to lose its license after he complained about the moderators in his debate with Harris.

Trump has also routinely aired his distrust of the federal workforce, complaining of a “deep state” he and allies believe resisted carrying out his policies during his first term. He has stressed loyalty will be key in a potential second term.

That’s led him to vow to push once again to carry out a short-lived order from his last term in office that makes it easier to fire federal workers, hire new ones outside the merit-based system, and install political appointees into jobs otherwise reserved for career government staffers.

Trump’s Agenda 47 promises to “dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption.”

“I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively,” Trump says in a 2023 video.

The fear from critics is that the order could allow the Trump administration to swiftly fire reclassified employees, potentially numbering in the thousands. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), previously suggested replacing them with “our people.”

How the Harris campaign has capitalized

The Harris campaign has made Trump’s barrage of threats and vows for retribution central to its case against the former president, particularly in the final weeks before Election Day.

The vice president and her team have made a point to highlight Trump’s threats to voters on the trail. Harris played footage at a Pennsylvania rally of the former president calling his rivals the “enemy from within” and suggesting the military could be used to quell protests.

She frequently highlights Trump’s comments to Fox News earlier in the year in which he said he would only be a dictator on day one of his presidency.

Trump has often demurred, calling his opponents the threat.

“These people — they’re so sick, and they’re so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again, it would be so easy to make this country great,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall with Georgia supporters. “I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations.”

Harris’s closing argument has in many ways focused on urging Americans to turn the page on the divisiveness of the Trump years. 

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list,” Harris said in remarks Tuesday from the Ellipse, using a phrase that has become commonplace in her stump speeches.

“When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list.”