Donald Trump gave his first interview to Univision on Thursday and reminded the nation that should he resume the presidency, he could very well embark on a revenge tour against his political enemies. The next morning his son, Don Jr., floated installing an acting attorney general who wants to unleash a “reign of terror” against those responsible for Trump’s indictments, as well as a pro-white nationalist press secretary.
“What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box,” Trump told Univion’s Enrique Acevedo of the many indictments and criminal cases currently leveled against him. “If they do this and they’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse.”
“If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who is doing well and beating me very badly, I’ll say, ‘go down and indict them,’” he added.
The morning after the interview aired, Trump called for New York Attorney General Letitia James to be prosecuted over what — in his view — is a wrongful civil fraud prosecution by the state against him, and his real estate empire. “
“Judge Engoron should end the ridiculous Political Witch Hunt against me,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social. “The only Fraud was committed by A.G. Letitia James in convincing the Judge that Mar-a-Lago was only worth $18,000,000 […] She should be prosecuted!”
The Univision interview and his social media posts aren’t the first time Trump has threatened to go after rival politicians and public servants he believes have targeted him unfairly. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the former president has already tasked his advisers with creating a plan to exact his revenge against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Special Counsel Jack Smith.
During a June speech in Florida, delivered hours after he pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts brought against him by the Justice Department, Trump vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden. And the entire Biden crime family.”
That special prosecutor could potentially find themselves under the direction of Mike Davis, a former aide to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch who has been floated as a potential pick for Trump’s attorney general, including by Don Jr. this week.
“There are a couple people you could put in positions like that, we talk about Mike Davis as Attorney General,” Trump Jr. said during a Q&A segment on his podcast. “You almost have to, just put them in as interim even, just to send that shot across the bow to the swamp … let Mike Davis and Kash Patel to be like interim AG’s. Put Laura Loomer as press secretary for just a couple of days.”
Davis floated a similar plan in August, discussing a hypothetical “three-week reign of terror as Trump’s acting attorney general.”
“Before I leave town with my pardon from President Trump, I have five lists that I’m ready to go,” Davis said. “List number one is fire. I’m gonna fire as many people as I can, and the list number two is an indictment. Frankly, I could indict a ham sandwich and these goofball Democrat prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith and Fani Willis and the civil fraud prosecutor Tish James up in New York, and we may have two other goofballs, Michigan attorney general and this Arizona attorney general.”
As for Loomer, an anti-Muslim activist who’s described herself as “pro-white nationalism,” her status within Trumpworld is that of being one his most loyal and rabid sycophants, and Trump has already floated rewarding her for her efforts.
The New York Times reported in April that Trump had pushed his campaign to hire Loomer onto the 2024 team. “The president has certainly known who I am for many years now,” Loomer told Rolling Stone regarding the potential hire.
But even within Trump’s circle, there are still those opposed to the introduction of Trump’s most vitriolic surrogates into his official inner circle. “Hell fucking no,” one campaign official told Rolling Stone in response to the Times report.