As former President Donald Trump threatens to prosecute his political rivals, my colleague Michael Schmidt, an investigative reporter, has an important look

Legal experts are deeply worried that he will follow through on these promises, as my colleagues at The New York Times Magazine have reported.

As former President Donald Trump threatens to prosecute his political rivals, my colleague Michael Schmidt, an investigative reporter, has an important look at how Trump deployed his power against his perceived enemies during his presidency. And we’re looking at the G.O.P.’s big bet on anti-trans ads. — Jess Bidgood

Donald Trump, wearing a blue suit, red tie and red cap that reads “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” is standing at a lectern and pointing with his right hand during a rally.

In 10 cases during his presidency, a demand from Donald Trump that someone be investigated was followed by their facing major federal pressure. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

What Omarosa, John Kerry and Michael Cohen have in common

By Michael S. Schmidt

The latest, with 28 days to go

Vice President Kamala Harris, in one of several media appearances today, proposed a Medicare expansion to help provide home care for seniors.

Former President Donald Trump secretly spoke with President Vladimir Putin of Russia after leaving office, according to a new book, and even sent him what were then rare Covid-19 test machines.

A national Times/Siena poll found Harris with a slim lead over Trump, with voters more likely to see her as a change candidate.

Former President Donald Trump has threatened a campaign of retribution if he returns to the White House, signaling that he will seek to prosecute rivals and enemies while stocking a second administration with loyalists who will carry out his wishes.

To underline the point, he has posted pictures on social media of political rivals like Vice President Kamala Harris, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wearing orange jumpsuits.

Legal experts are deeply worried that he will follow through on these promises, as my colleagues at The New York Times Magazine have reported. His allies say that it’s all bluster and that he won’t try to carry out campaign-season threats if he were to gain control of the Justice Department and other government agencies.

The truth is, though, as president he demanded investigations of his enemies and often got them.

I’m an investigative reporter, and I spent the past several months trying to understand what a future Trump administration may hold by looking to the last one. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what I learned — and how Trump’s open pledges to use the machinery of the federal government against his enemies make him an outlier among leaders around the globe.

A demand for investigation, and then federal pressure

I have been reporting on Trump’s attempts to weaponize the government since his first year in office. I knew that, while president, Trump had publicly and privately pressured the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his rivals, because I had covered it.

But what I had failed to appreciate, in the blizzard of news, was that he had been far more successful than I thought in having the government’s most powerful arms directed at his enemies.

In 10 cases that I looked at, a demand from Trump that someone be investigated was followed by their facing major federal pressure. Even without evidence of Trump signing a direct order, after he expressed a desire for a person to be targeted, remarkably, the Justice Department, the F.B.I. or the I.R.S. ended up doing what Trump wanted.

The list included many of Trump’s enemies whom we’re familiar with: Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Michael Cohen, John Bolton and members of the news media.

In 2018, a day after Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former Trump aide, announced that she was writing a negative tell-all memoir, the White House asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into a seemingly unrelated paperwork dispute that led to a government lawsuit against her. The department ultimately filed the suit, and she was ordered to pay a $61,000 fine.

Cohen, a former fixer for Trump, was given a three-year prison sentence for his role in the Stormy Daniels payment, but during the coronavirus pandemic he was allowed to serve it at home. When he refused to sign an agreement saying he would not write a book about Trump while serving his sentence, he was thrown back in prison — a move that a federal judge quickly reversed and ruled to be retaliatory.

After it was revealed that former Secretary of State John Kerry was working behind the scenes to try to keep the Iran nuclear deal together, Trump publicly accused him of breaking the law for staying in touch with Iranian diplomats after he left office. The former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, said Justice Department officials in Washington repeatedly pressured his office to investigate Kerry.

Nearly a year later, when Trump again raised questions about whether Kerry had broken the law, department officials again pressured Berman’s office.

An investigation was conducted into Kerry, but he was never prosecuted because prosecutors concluded that there was not enough evidence to show he had broken the law.

Trump has, of course, claimed that he is the victim of a politicized prosecution by the Justice Department. But there’s no evidence that the federal investigations he faced, carried out by a special counsel, were ordered by President Biden or the White House.

A matter of freedom

Ian Bassin, wearing a gray suit jacket and white shirt, poses for a portrait outdoors with his arms behind his back.

Ian Bassin, the executive director of a nonprofit group called Protect Democracy, said Trump stood out among leaders who have weaponized the power of the state against their political enemies. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

While the news media often covers Trump’s conduct extensively, we don’t always explain why it is so unusual or questionable. So I asked Ian Bassin, an expert on the question of democracy and political meddling in prosecutions who leads a group called Protect Democracy, if he could help.

Bassin explained that in the United States, Americans believe we are “free” because we are free to speak our minds, compete in the marketplace and associate with whomever we want without fearing the government will punish us for doing so.

“The very definition of freedom is to be able to do those things without retribution or even just fear of retribution by the government,” Bassin told me.

And no matter who we are, we are all going to be treated the same way: based on the laws and the facts.

But once the government shows that it is no longer moored to matters of law and evidence, and is instead acting based solely on the whims of a president, the entire system begins to unravel.

“Once the government has made clear it can and will attempt to use the awesome power of the state to seek to punish you based on who you are, what you think, how you’ve exercised your rights or whether you’ve shown sufficient fealty to the leader, you are no longer truly free,” Bassin told me.

Any president who took these actions would further entrench himself in power.

“Very few people are willing to risk the wrath of the government to express their opinion, and once people stop expressing their opinions openly, the lifeblood drains out of democracy and self-government,” Bassin said.

Other leaders around the world have weaponized the power of the state against their enemies, he said, including Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hosni Mubarak, who served as president of Egypt for 30 years. But they rarely spoke about it openly, the way Trump has. And rarely have they made it such a central part of a campaign for office.

“Putin doesn’t boast of killing his critics or enriching loyal oligarchs,” Bassin said. “And yet unlike virtually every other despot, Trump says he’s going to engage in punitive and retaliatory behavior out loud.”

“History has rarely seen anything like it,” Bassin said.

On Politics