Threats by Donald Trump that he will use the levers of government to exact revenge on his enemies and detractors if he is re-elected should be taken as a deadly reality, according to multiple legal experts.
As part of Trump's bid to return to the Oval Office, the former president has promised to "be your retribution" to his MAGA fans and during that time the landscape has changed after the Supreme Court handed him immunity for any actions that are deemed are part of his presidential duties.
According to Politico's legal analyst Ankush Khardori, there is every reason Trump will make good on his threats of a "revenge agenda" while noting a Trump-aligned attorney confided to him, "I would love to be a special counsel or a viceroy and exact painful retribution on all these motherf----rs, because I think retribution is a key part of justice."
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That led one former DOJ official to say of Trump, "He has come right out and said that’s what he wants to do, and he was obviously very frustrated during the last administration, when he wasn’t able to have as much influence in that area as he wanted.”
One victim of Trump's first administration, former FBI official Andrew McCabe, agreed and told Politico, "It’s one of the things that actually matters to him.”
Khardori wrote, "Trump has been through the legal wringer in the last year-and-a-half and will want payback. He’s a convicted criminal and still faces trials that could send him to prison, and he’s not likely to forget all about that even if his legal troubles essentially disappear once he reaches the White House. He could easily wreak havoc with many of his political opponents’ lives simply by subjecting them to long, costly and highly disruptive criminal investigations and prosecutions."
As for McCabe, he had a warning for anyone who has gotten on Trump's wrong side.
"I can’t even describe to you how head-spinning this is to go through this 21-year career — running the FBI at the end of it — and all of a sudden you’re worried about everything. Going to jail, working again, getting bankrupted by attorneys’ fees.”
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