Former President Donald Trump has vowed to unleash federal prosecutors on critics if he wins reelection next year in what he frames as retaliation for his own criminal woes.
The once-and-maybe-future president openly admitted that he would order authorities to prosecute his rivals, a move that would amount to a dramatic break with a bedrock principle of the American legal system.
"If I happen to be president and I see somebody who's doing well and beating me very badly, I say: 'Go down and indict them,'" Trump told the Spanish-language Univision network in an interview aired Thursday night. "They'd be out of business. They'd be out of the election."
Trump asserted that unleashing federal prosecutors and the FBI on his political opponents would be only fair because he has been indicted in four separate cases and is facing 91 felony counts.
"They've released the genie out of the box," Trump said. "You know, when you're president and you've done a good job and you're popular, you don't go after them so you can win an election."
Trump did not name those rivals whom he would put in the legal crosshairs if he finds a way back to the White House in the 2024 vote, but he has previously floated charges against Gen. Mark Milley, Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, among others.
Trump has long told allies that he plans to dispense with legal and political niceties in a potential second term and proceed with a campaign of "retribution" for what he sees as his own persecution by liberal prosecutors.
To facilitate Trump's plans, pro-Trump legal figures have drafted plans that would jettison Justice Department policies intended to prevent political consideration from driving criminal prosecutions.
