Trump critics worry he'll target them for retribution
WASHINGTON — Olivia Troye, a former Trump administration official who denounced him in a speech at the Democratic convention in August, was boarding a plane recently when a passenger looked at her and said: “Your days are numbered.”
Not wanting to escalate a bad situation, she said nothing, but the troubling encounter is emblematic of the hostility she’s faced as a recognizable and vocal critic of Trump. Now, with Trump returning to the White House, she is beset by newfound fears that he, his appointees or supporters could try to punish her for speaking out.
“I’m worried that I’ll be targeted by him and a lot of people in his circle,” Troye said in an interview. “They very much know who I am. And I’m concerned for my family.”
She has plenty of company. For some who’ve run afoul of Trump, the election results have sparked fresh worries that he may enter office looking for retribution.
He’s been out of power for nearly four years, airing grievances over how he believes he’s been mistreated by law enforcement, but on Jan. 20 he’ll be sworn in with a panoply of governmental powers at his disposal. He’s made no secret of who he believes has wronged him, and as president, he could upend their lives through investigations, tax audits or courts-martial if he chose.
During the campaign, Trump has made different statements about whether he might target people who’ve upset him. What he’s said can be construed in different ways. He gave a speech last year hours after he was charged with mishandling classified documents and said that if elected, he would “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the United States of America: Joe Biden and the entire Biden crime family.”
In February, he dismissed any concerns that he might want vengeance, saying: “My revenge will be success.”
He told Fox News last month in an exchange about weaponizing government against political foes: “I don’t want to do that. That’s a bad thing for the country. I don’t want to do that. I haven’t said that I would. But they have done it.”
In the same interview, he described Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, both of California, as the “enemy from within.”
As for Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who has been investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Trump said last month he should be “thrown out of the country.” (A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment).
Rep. Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump ally in Congress, said he doesn’t expect any of the prosecutors to face reprisals over Trump investigations.
“I don’t think any of that’s going to happen because we’re the party who’s against political prosecution,” Jordan said Sunday on CNN. “We’re the party who’s against going after your opponents using lawfare.”
None of this has a precise parallel in the modern era. President Richard Nixon had his enemies, but tended to rail against them in private.
“The main thing is, the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one,” Nixon told his aides in 1972, complaining about The Washington Post’s coverage. “Well, the game has to be played awfully rough.”
Interviews with 10 people — those who worked in the first Trump administration, lawmakers and critics, among others — reveal varying levels of distress.
A private attorney, Mark Zaid, said he has consulted with clients about how they can best protect themselves in a second Trump administration. He said he has advised some to leave the country before Trump is sworn in and live abroad until they have a clear sense of whether he is bent on retaliation.
“I am aware of people who have already made such plans,” Zaid said.
Punitive action could take different forms.
In the last term, a federal judge ruled that prison officials had taken “retaliatory” action against Trump’s former lawyer-turned-critic Michael Cohen over a book he was writing. They had transferred Cohen from home detention to prison, a move that was “retaliatory in response to Cohen desiring to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book critical of the President [Trump] and to discuss the book on social media,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote. He ordered Cohen returned to confinement in his Manhattan apartment.
Security clearances can be important to people who’ve moved to the private sector, and if the Trump administration were to yank them, he could deprive them of their livelihoods.
Incoming Vice President JD Vance suggested last month that the Trump administration would pull the security clearances of the 51 people with national security experience who signed a letter before the 2020 election questioning the authenticity of emails found on a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan that “they still all have security clearances, I believe, which is going to change when we win.”
Larry Pfeiffer, former chief of staff at the CIA who co-signed the letter, said: “There are colleagues of mine on that list who have clearances because they’re active members of companies that do business inside the intelligence community, and they will likely lose their post-government livelihoods if their clearances are pulled.”
“It would be, in our view, absolutely unprecedented to pull peoples’ clearances for some opinion that they espouse,” he added.
Trump will assume office with a mandate from voters and minimal restraints. Republicans will take control of the Senate and are better positioned than Democrats to run the House given the election results that are still coming in, lifting a potential check on executive power.
Separately, a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year imbued the president with sweeping immunity, removing a deterrent to possible retaliatory action.
Because Trump is limited to one term, public opinion won’t be the brake that it has been for presidents facing re-election.
Though Trump has at times offered assurances that he wouldn’t try to avenge the wrongs he says he’s suffered, some of his critics aren’t convinced he means it.
A Fox News host asked him last month if he would “do to them what they did to him.”
“A lot of people say that’s what should happen if you want to know the truth,” Trump said.
Asked if he would “look at his political enemies” when back in office, Trump said: “No, I want to make this the most successful country in the world. That’s what I want to do.”
Schiff’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After Trump referred to him as an “enemy” living inside the country, Schiff posted on social media that “there is no justification for such dictatorial behavior. Except dictatorial ambition.”
A spokesman for Pelosi pointed to her comments in a Los Angeles Times article before the election, in which she said that if Trump were to win, “not just us, but many other people would be targeted.”
“If anyone begins to truly use the criminal justice system or other aspects of the government to target their enemies, then we are nothing but a banana republic,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat who before entering office was the lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment case. “The response you’ll get from Republicans is, ‘That’s what Joe Biden did.’ And I would ask any right-thinking person to actually say that Joe Biden weaponized the Department of Justice when his Department of Justice convicted his own son.”
Not wanting to call attention to themselves or antagonize Trump, some who’ve been publicly critical in the past are staying silent for now.
One former Trump White House official who has publicly spoken against Trump described feeling “scared” and declined to let their name be used.
Another ex-Trump administration official who has publicly derided Trump said that while they’re remaining in the U.S., others are “conferring with counsel and trying to figure things out like what are the immigration laws and policies in places they might consider going.”
“It’s unreal,” this person added. “It’s unreal that in this day and age in this country, we’re having these thoughts and concerns.”
It’s not just Trump and his circle that frighten those who’ve spoken out; it’s also his following. Two days after the election, someone wrote in reply to one of Troye’s posts on X: “You too should prepare for prison. Trump owns your pathetic ass.”
Michael Fanone, the former D.C. police officer who was attacked on Jan. 6 and became a vocal critic of Trump since that time, called him an “authoritarian” earlier this year. Hours later, his 78-year-old mother was “swatted,” with a SWAT team showing up at her home while she was in her nightgown because of a false report.
Now, Fanone says he is hunkering down in his Virginia mountain-area home for fear that Trump could weaponize the police.
“I’ll die right here on my f------ house,” he told The Washington Post. “I’m not going to be in some ‘Apprentice’ f------ military tribunal.”
Zaid represented a whistleblower in Trump’s first impeachment trial and has also defended some of the 51 people who co-signed the Hunter Biden letter. In 2019, Trump called him a “sleazeball,” citing some anti-Trump tweets he had posted two years earlier.
He, too, is uneasy about what’s to come.
“We’re certainly concerned that the new White House will make it difficult for us to represent federal employees fairly — (meaning) that they would not retaliate against our clients,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that if they wanted, they can make our lives difficult and interfere with anyone’s law practice, just by saying they’re not going to respond to things we do.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
If Trump or his political appointees were to pursue legal retribution, career prosecutors may not find it easy to bring such cases, nor might they be willing to go along.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, who wrote a book disparaging Trump’s methods, said in an interview: “I assume there’s a long retribution list and I’m on it.”
He sketched out what might happen if, hypothetically, Trump ordered the Justice Department to open an investigation into a political foe that had no legal basis.
Eventually, the request would fall from political appointees to career Justice Department prosecutors. What these lawyers choose to do is “when the rubber meets the road,” said Bolton, a former Justice Department official in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“Does the career prosecutor say, ‘I’m not going to do that’? Do they fire him? Does he resign? When does that become public? Fifteen seconds later is the answer to that. And then we have a crisis.”
Trump’s appointments may offer the earliest clues as to how he’ll use the government’s vast powers. Will he fill posts with loyalists who want only to please him and indulge his instincts, or will he pick people for whom the rule of law remains a guidepost?
At least one Democrat was heartened by Trump’s selection of Susie Wiles, daughter of the late NFL football announcer Pat Summerall, as his White House chief of staff.
“She is brilliant, tough, strategic,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., wrote on X. “She will serve the country well.”
For now, others who may have reason to fear Trump’s return are watching and waiting to see what happens.
Aquilino Gonell, a former U.S. Capitol police sergeant who was assaulted by Trump supporters on Jan. 6 and who later testified before the House committee investigating the riot, said: “Yes, I have to be vigilant. I mean, I have a family to take care of.”
Gonell sustained injuries in the Jan. 6 attack that forced him to retire in 2022. He campaigned for Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential race and has been vocal about what he sees as Trump’s failings as his supporters flooded the Capitol that day and interfered with the transfer of power.
Gonell said that “they cannot erase what I did. We fought his mob.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com