Former President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that, should he win back the White House next year, he would move to exact some revenge on political opponents who he feels have unfairly persecuted him with indictments.
“If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse. It could certainly happen in reverse,” Trump said in an interview with Univision that aired Thursday, according to the Washington Times. “What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box. You understand that, they’ve done something that nobody thought would happen.”
Describing the indictments, many of which have been brought by the Justice Department, as “pathetic,” he went on to say they were political in nature to help President Joe Biden win reelection, adding that Biden has “weaponized” the DOJ and FBI.
“They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponization, and the people aren’t going to stand for it,” Trump told the Spanish-language network. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ Mostly what that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They’d be out, they’d be out of the election.”
The Times added:
The former president has been indicted in four separate cases this year, both federal and state. The Justice Department has charged him in Florida for mishandling classified documents and in Washington for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
He is also facing charges in New York for hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs and in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges he faces in New York, Washington, D.C., Georgia, and Florida.
Still, he says the indictments have been good for him politically, telling the network they have “actually been helpful from the standpoint of getting elected.” He also called the charges against him “political persecution [and a] political hoax.”
“I’m probably the only guy ever indicted whose poll numbers have shot up through the roof,” he said.
