“I said, ‘Wouldn’t it really be bad? … 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?” Trump mused Tuesday on Newsmax.
“But they want to do it,” Trump said, appearing to refer to his opponents. “So, you know, 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.”
“It’s a terrible precedent for our country,” he said of the New York case against him at another point in the interview. “Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question.”
Trump, who pleaded not guilty in New York, has called the case politically motivated and attacked the liberal district attorney who brought it. Prosecutors said they were following the facts. Trump and his allies have also repeatedly suggested that President Biden is behind Trump’s prosecution, despite no evidence of the Biden administration coordinating with the local authorities who oversaw the case.
The former president faces criminal charges in three other cases in which prosecutors have charged him for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and allegedly mishandling classified documents. But it is not clear that those cases — federal ones brought in D.C. and Florida, along with a state case in Georgia — will go to trial before Election Day in November.
Representatives for the Trump and Biden campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has made payback for opponents central to his campaign, at one point declaring to a crowd: “I am your retribution.” In private, has told advisers and friends that he wants the Justice Department to investigate specific former aides and allies who are now critical of him, The Washington Post previously reported. And he has promised to appoint a special prosecutor to scrutinize Biden and his family.
But Trump’s message also has been muddled at times. “I’m not going to have time for retribution. We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not going to have time for retribution,” he said at an event in Iowa in January.
In an interview, portions of which aired Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” after his conviction, Trump distanced himself from his supporters’ calls in 2016 to “lock up” then-Democratic presidential nominee Clinton, even though he embraced the idea at points.
At a July 2016 rally, when some in the crowd called for Clinton to be jailed, Trump said he would not be “Mr. Nice Guy.”
“Every time I mention her, everyone screams, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’” Trump said. “You know what, I’m starting to agree with you.”
But after his election, on Nov. 9, 2016, Trump changed his tune. “Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said at the time.
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
