Watergate prosecutor flags 'best path to defeating the bully' that is Trump

President Donald Trump appears likely to target his hometown for vengeance if the results of New York City's mayoral race don't go the way he wants, and a Watergate prosecutor urged officials and candidates alike to start getting ready now.

The president has already threatened to withhold billions in federal funds from the city and send in troops to crack down on immigration if self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral election, as he seems poised to do, and former special prosecutor Nick Akerman urged him in a column for MSNBC to start strategizing now for his coming legal battles.

"Mamdani has no illusions about Trump’s vindictiveness," Akerman wrote. "So far, Mamdani has politically pushed back against Trump’s bullying with the united front of New York’s two top state officials — Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James (herself a target of the president). He has likely recognized that every target of Trump’s bullying that has stood up to the president has gained rather than lost political clout. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, for example, regained public support after directly confronting federal agents when Trump sent the National Guard into LA."

"But more is now needed," he added. "It is not too early to create a detailed strategic plan to thwart Trump’s bullying once Mamdani becomes mayor."

Akerman, who helped prosecute the Watergate burglary that brought down Richard Nixon and then served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, urged Mamdani to study the strategy used by former President John F. Kennedy to confront Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

"Though the threat of nuclear war loomed, Kennedy rose to the challenge: Khrushchev blinked, and Russia removed the nuclear warheads from Cuba," Akerman wrote. "We are now witnessing another generational standoff between America’s bully-in-chief ... [and] the likely next mayor of New York City, whom Trump has referred to as 'Mamdani the commie.' In 1962, Khrushchev was 23 years older than Kennedy. The difference in age between Trump and Mamdani — 44 years — is about double."

Khrushchev tried to intimidate the first-term president by moving nuclear warheads and missiles into Cuba, but Kennedy refused to back down and the Soviet leader blinked and removed the warheads, and Akerman encouraged Mamdani to have his advisers start drafting ready-to-file court motions to deploy against the president.

"Trump has shown a penchant for not following the U.S. Constitution and statutory law," Akerman wrote. "This has been his underlying weakness in his ongoing retribution campaigns against his perceived enemies. New York City must be prepared to seize on those missteps and follow the examples of Harvard University, Jenner & Block and other institutions that have successfully used Trump’s blatant violations of the law against him in court."

He must also be ready to fill vacancies in the city's Law Department as soon as he becomes mayor, the former prosecutor said.

"Mamdani is all but certain to face the full spectrum of intimidation from Trump and his allies," Akerman wrote. "A well-thought-out strategic plan, similar to the one Kennedy orchestrated in response to Khrushchev, is the best path to defeating the bully."