“I said, ‘Wouldn’t that be really bad? … The wife of the president and the former secretary of state, think about it, wouldn’t it be terrible to put a former secretary of state and the wife of the president in prison?'” Trump said on Newsmax on Tuesday.
“But they want to do that,” Trump said, apparently referring to his opponents. “It’s a very, very scary path that they’re trying to lead us down, and it’s very possible that they will too.”
“This is a terrible precedent for our country,” he said at another point in the interview, referring to the lawsuit against him in New York. “Are you saying the next president is going to do the same to them? That’s really the question.”
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in New York, has called the case politically motivated and attacked the liberal district attorney who brought it. He said prosecutors were pursuing the facts. Trump and his allies have also repeatedly suggested President Biden was behind Trump’s prosecution, despite a lack of evidence that his administration coordinated with local officials who oversaw the case.
The former president also faces criminal charges in three other cases in which prosecutors have charged him with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents. But it is not clear whether those cases – federal lawsuits filed in Washington, D.C. and Florida, and a state lawsuit in Georgia – will go to trial before Election Day in November.
Representatives for the Trump and Biden campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump has made retribution against his opponents a central part of his campaign, at one point telling a crowd, “I am your revenge.” Trump has privately told advisers and friends he wants the Justice Department to investigate certain former aides and allies who are now critical of him, The Washington Post previously reported. Trump has also promised to appoint a special counsel to vet Biden and his family.
But Trump’s messaging has sometimes been confusing: “We’re not going to waste time on retaliation. We’re going to make this country successful again. We’re not going to waste time on retaliation,” he said at an event in Iowa in January.
In interviews since his conviction, parts of which aired Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Trump distanced himself from calls by his supporters to “lock up” Clinton, who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, an idea he briefly supported.
At a July 2016 rally, when some in the crowd called for Clinton to be jailed, Trump said he was not “Mr. Nice Guy.”
“Every time I mention her, people scream, ‘Put her in jail, put her in jail,'” Trump said. “Actually, I’m starting to agree with you guys.”
But after his election on Nov. 9, 2016, Trump changed his tune: “Hillary has worked very long and hard over a long period of time, and we owe her an enormous amount of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said at the time.
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
