Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently warned against a Donald Trump presidency using the "full weight" of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in revenge against his political opponents.
Trump, the GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has said he will look for "retribution" against his opponents, but said he won't become a dictator if reelected. "Other than day one," the former president said during an Iowa town hall last week, adding that he would only use the office forcefully in regards to expanding oil drilling and closing the border with Mexico.
During a recent interview appearance on CNN, Holder, who was appointed U.S. attorney general by President Barack Obama in 2009, told anchor Laura Coates that it would be a simple process for a president to put in place to seek revenge against a political opponent they think has wronged them.
"If the president told a compliant attorney general, 'I don't like what this congressman said about me or did about me [or] did to me over the course of the last two or three years, open an investigation on that person,' that attorney general could tell a compliant United States attorney to do just that. [They can also] talk to a compliant FBI director who could be placed by the president to open an investigation and look through that person's life for anything that you can possibly find," Holder said.
He continued: "Whose to say what you find in any person's life that might run afoul of the law? Even beyond that, the mere fact of an investigation of a person who is a public figure can be reputation-ruining [and] can be politically damaging. Not even if you find anything, just the fact that the investigation itself exists. If you have the full weight of the Justice Department, full weight of the presidency, full weight of the FBI focusing on somebody like that, that can be extremely damaging to not only that person individually, but to our democracy at large."
Trump, who is currently facing 91 criminal charges across four indictments, two state and two federal ones, has repeatedly maintained his innocence in the cases and has repeatedly said that are part of a political witch hunt against him.
Meanwhile, some Trump allies have previously said they hope a second Trump presidency will mean that they can target people they view as having sought an unjustified legal campaign against them.
Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official and part of the Trump administration, told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on his podcast last week that they will "go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media."
"We're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice," Patel said.
The former president and his allies have repeatedly claimed, without any evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen due to widespread voter fraud
Patel was not speaking on Trump's behalf, with the former president's campaign saying statements like this "have nothing to do with" them, according to the Associated Press.
However, Trump has singled out the likes of NBC News and MSNBC and suggested their access to broadcasting should possibly be restricted.
"I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in September. "Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country."
Newsweek has contacted NBC and MSNBC, as well as representatives for Trump for comment via email.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
To Rate This Article
About the writer
Benjamin Lynch is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is U.S. politics and national affairs and he ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
