Donald Trump has declared that if he wins back the White House in November, he might imprison his political enemies.
Trump’s audacious statement came just days after a New York jury found him guilty of a staggering 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Despite the verdict, Trump vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
In a fiery interview with the ultra-conservative outlet Newsmax on Tuesday, Trump added fuel to the fire by blatantly denying he had ever suggested jailing his 2016 election rival, Hillary Clinton.
“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? Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing?” Trump asserted.
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“But now, they want to do it,” the presumptive Republican presidential candidate exclaimed, targeting his political foes. “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.”
On Newsmax, Trump blasted the New York case against him as a “nightmarish precedent for our country.”
“Does that mean the next president throws them in jail?” he pondered, referring to his adversaries. “That’s the real question.”
“Some people said I should have done it, but, you know, could have, would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said.
"It's very possible it'll have to happen to them" — Trump threats to imprison his political opponents pic.twitter.com/7X1JjBJyUA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2024
Trump has consistently claimed the New York case was rigged and wrongly implicated Joe Biden in the state prosecution. Biden, however, has firmly denounced Trump’s attempt to undermine the legal system.
Trump “wants you to believe it’s all rigged,” Biden said during a campaign event in Greenwich, Connecticut, on Monday. “But nothing could be further from the truth. The facts are Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. It was a state case, even though he said Biden set this up, and not a federal case.”
Trump faces sentencing on July 11 by Judge Juan M. Merchan. Each felony count carries a potential four-year prison term. However, it remains uncertain whether prosecutors will seek imprisonment or if Merchan will sentence Trump to jail even if prosecutors recommend it.
In addition to this case, Trump is entangled in three other criminal cases, although it is unclear if any will proceed to trial before November.
