'Sheer terror': Election workers brace for violence as Trump amps up prosecution rhetoric

Election workers are less worried former President Donald Trump will prosecute them if he wins the November election and more worried they'll be physically attacked if he loses, according to a new report.

The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen election officials and democracy experts nationwide and discovered they're not impressed with Trump's threats or his tactics.

“You won’t find instances in the contemporary world of a mature and stable and even faintly liberal democracy where a major presidential candidate is making these kinds of threats,” Larry Diamond, a Stanford University fellow, told the Times. “It’s just bizarre and unprecedented.”

This reporting comes as Trump amps up political rhetoric in a tightening race against Vice President Kamala Harris by accusing election workers of corruption and promising they'll be jailed should Republican National Committee monitors uncover proof.

"WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again," Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this month.

"We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T!"

The threat is troubling considering Trump spread baseless election fraud claims in 2020 as he tried to dismantle his defeat and claim Joe Biden's rightfully won presidency for himself, the Times reported.

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That didn't stop Judd Choate, Colorado's election director, from shrugging off Trump's rhetoric.

“In one respect I think, ‘Good luck,’” Choate told the Times. “We live in the U.S., where you have to have a basis for incarcerating somebody. I don’t see it going anywhere."

But Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Georgia election official, compared Trump's rhetoric to her lived experience in Liberia when the president's special guard raided a nearby radio station.

“It was absolute sheer terror that I felt at the time, because I thought, ‘I’m next, OK, this is it,’” Ghazal told the Times. “That whole scene, and that sort of visceral relief, replayed through my head when I read the headlines, and when I saw the [Trump] post.”

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told the Times about her response to being called out by name by Republican state representative Matt Maddock, who said she'd be “prosecuted and convicted” if Trump won.

“The escalation of that rhetoric and the threat is worrisome, not just because of its vitriol but also because of the possibility, the increased possibility, that someone in a state could take it upon themselves to exact the type of vengeance that he’s expressing in a vigilante type of way," she told the Times.

"That could lead to someone getting harmed or worse."