Trump suggests he could investigate opponents if reelected
Former President Trump said in a new interview that he could use the government to investigate his political opponents if he is reelected, suggesting it would be fair game after the Department of Justice indicted him in two separate cases earlier this year.
“If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse. It could certainly happen in reverse,” Trump said in an interview with Univision. “What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box. You understand that. They've done something that nobody thought would happen.”
“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 continued.
"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.’ Mostly that would be, you know, they’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election," he added.
The comments echoed what Trump told supporters during a rally in Hialeah, Fla., on Wednesday night.
"Now that he indicted me, we’re allowed to look at him. But he did real bad things," Trump said at the rally, adding that he would direct the Justice Department "to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America."
Trump has been indicted in four separate cases this year.
The Department of Justice has charged him in Florida over his handling and retention of classified information after leaving office, and in Washington, D.C., for his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election and remain in power.
Trump is also facing state charges in New York for an alleged hush money scheme to keep an affair quiet, and he is facing charges in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
Biden and his aides have been adamant that the president has had no communication with Attorney General Merrick Garland about the Trump cases, and they have refrained from weighing in on those cases publicly.
Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to handle the investigations into Trump, citing potential conflicts of interest since Trump is running for office.
The former president has repeatedly claimed that the charges against him are a form of election interference, arguing President Biden and his Justice Department are seeking to hurt his chances of winning the 2024 election.
Trump is dominating the Republican presidential primary contest, leading by an average of nearly 60 points in national polls and making him the frontrunner for the party’s nomination despite his legal woes. A spate of recent polls have also shown Trump leading Biden in key battleground states.