Would a reelected Trump prosecute his opponents? He already tried.
GOP plans aggressive ‘weaponization’ investigations in wake of Trump conviction. House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to use House oversight powers and other measures to target jurisdictions pursuing prosecutions of the former president.
Trump and his allies are pretending that his recent conviction gives him moral space to target his enemies. But he tried that the first time around.
“It’s a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump suggested. “Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question.” After an aside, he isolated the example of Hillary Clinton, who was a frequent target of calls for prosecution during the 2016 campaign. “With, like, as an example, Hillary, with the hammering of her cellphones and all of the things she did,” he said, making a reference to one of his shorthand disparagements of his former opponent. “But wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state — think of it, the former secretary of state but the president’s wife into jail, wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it. So, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to. And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.” He then suggested that it was only his restraint that kept Clinton from being prosecuted while he was president. “Some people said I should have done it,” he said, “Would have been very easy to do it. But I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country.”
This is nonsense.
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