After delivering a historic guilty verdict last week, former President Donald Trump issued a warning to his political opponents on Tuesday.
In an interview with the conservative newspaper Newsmax, Trump appeared to raise the possibility of imprisoning his political opponents if he becomes president again.
“So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us down, and it’s very possible that it could happen to them,” Trump said in discussing his guilty verdict.
“Does that mean the next president will do this to them? That’s really the question,” he added.
Talk of prosecuting his political enemies was a constant talking point during his campaign and has begun to resurface since the verdict.
Early in his reelection campaign, Trump frequently raised the possibility of suing President Joe Biden.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to prosecute the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and prosecute the Biden crime family,” Trump said in June at his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey. just hours after being elected. was arraigned in a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
Trump also discussed his 2016 opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and how he didn’t jail her. “Lock her up” was a frequent slogan at Trump campaign rallies — often fueled by Trump himself — during this election cycle.
But Trump congratulated himself on not having attacked Clinton, compared to what is being done to him now.
“Some people said I should have done it, but, you know, it could have, it would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said . “And now, whoever it is, you’re going to have to see things very differently. This is a bad, very bad road that they are leading us down as a country. »
A Clinton spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump said his revenge would be his “success.”
“And I really mean that, but it’s terribly difficult when you see what they’ve done. These people are so evil,” Trump said.
He also suggested there would be a “breaking point” for the public if he ended up serving a prison sentence or under house arrest after being found guilty at his secret trial.
A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty of all 34 counts in his hush money case, linked to hiding payments made to an adult film star to help the 2016 campaign.
In the Newsmax interview, Trump complained about the jury during his trial, saying he “never saw a flicker of a smile” from them and added that he didn’t have a fair trial.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the hush case, imposed a silence on Trump, barring him from speaking about jurors, potential witnesses and individual prosecutors, which he has not lifted since the trial ended. During the trial, Merchan fined Trump $10,000 for violating the gag order.
Trump also went after writer E. Jean Carroll, who said Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s.
“I never met this woman,” he said of Carroll. “I don’t know this woman.” And I’m supposed to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a fictional story.
Last May, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll and ordered him to pay him $5 million. In January, after continuing to deny Carroll’s claims and publicly attacking him, he was ordered to pay him an additional $83 million for defamation.