Former President Donald Trump is banking on his authority to prosecute some of his top Democratic nemeses, including Alvin Bragg and Letitia James, if he wins another four-year term in the White House.
Insiders close to Trump, speaking with Axios, laid out a strategy by which a newly elected President Trump could rely on existing civil rights laws to charge the two progressive New York prosecutors. Steve Bannon, a former top advisor to the Republican, would be among those pushing an elected President Trump to act.
“Of course [Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed,” Bannon told the outlet, describing how many in the MAGA movement feel about the Manhattan district attorney who oversaw Trump’s hush money prosecution. To get there, Bannon argued, Trump could rely on the 14th Amendment (equal protection) and Fourth Amendment (outlawing unreasonable searches and seizures by the government) “plus scores of other” laws. The “War Room” host suggested a lawfare probe should include “investigations to include [Democrats’] media allies.”
A second Trump insider pointed to Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241, a federal statute known as the “Conspiracy Against Rights” which declares it is “unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States.” Bragg’s charges on a hush money payment, the source indicated, would qualify.
Bragg and James, the state attorney general who successfully prosecuted Trump in a civil real estate trial, are not the only ones in the crosshairs of a second Trump administration. Last year the former president wrote on Truth Social that he could charge President Joe Biden with similar crimes. “APPOINT A REAL SPECIAL ‘PROSECUTOR’ TO GO AFTER THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, JOE BIDEN,” he wrote at the time.
Allies of Trump expect he will carefully vet candidates for the top position of U.S. Attorney General before making a decision. “If you get the right person, it’s like magic,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” last year as he described the breadth of power unlocked by a willing attorney general to specifically direct the Justice Department to follow the president’s command. On Tuesday, House Republicans grilled Attorney General Merrick Garland, accusing him in a hearing of sending a subordinate to Bragg’s office in order to direct Trump’s prosecution at the direction of the White House. “It’s like in real estate: You know, you put a good super in a building, the building runs well. You put a bad one in, it doesn’t. It’s the same thing [on] a little bit — slightly larger scale,” Trump explained.
In the meantime, House allies including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) have filed legislation intended to “defund the lawfare activities” of state and federal prosecutors accused of leading “politically sensitive investigations.” Other prosecutors at risk of losing access to federal funding include the DOJ’s special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump in two cases, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis who continues to pursue charges against Trump related to the 2020 election.
