How Trump Could Punish His Enemies

We look at why legal experts are concerned.

Donald Trump says Kamala Harris should be prosecuted for the Biden administration’s border policies. He wants President Biden to be prosecuted for corruption, Nancy Pelosi for her husband’s stock trades and Google for its search results about Trump and Harris. His list of targets for investigation also includes state prosecutors, judges and former officials from the F.B.I. and other parts of the Justice Department.

If Trump wins, he can use the Justice Department, including the F.B.I., to seek revenge against his political enemies — even if, as in the cases above, there is little or no evidence of a crime. Doing so would go far beyond anything Trump pursued in his first term.

There are multiple safeguards in the American legal system. They largely held when Trump was president. Will they hold again if he has a second term? We posed that question to 50 former top officials from the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office, along with a few retired judges and nonpartisan career D.O.J. lawyers. The former officials, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, have served seven presidents.

Most of them are freaked out about Trump’s potential impact on the Justice Department, as we wrote today in a story for The New York Times Magazine.

Sounding an alarm

Here’s what they told us.

• Forty-two of the 50 former officials said it was very likely or likely that a second Trump term would pose a significant threat to the norm of keeping criminal enforcement free of White House influence, a policy that has been in place since the Watergate scandal.

• Thirty-nine of 50 said it was likely or very likely that Trump, if elected, would order the Justice Department to investigate a political adversary. (Six more said it was possible.) This, too, is something presidents don’t do.

• The respondents were more split on how the Justice Department would respond. Twenty-seven of the 50 said it was very likely or likely that career prosecutors at the D.O.J. would follow orders and pursue the case. Thirteen said it was possible. Nine said it was unlikely or very unlikely.

Not everyone was panicked. A handful of respondents rejected our survey’s premise, saying we had unfairly or unnecessarily focused on Trump. The survey was an example of “mainstream media bias,” one Reagan-appointed official said, “that permits liberal prosecutors to violate norms for the rule of law with limited oversight in the court of public opinion.” Other former officials said the department’s career professionals would keep Trump in check.

But several Republican appointees, along with Democratic ones, warned that an extremist president in general, and Trump in particular, was the biggest threat they saw to the rule of law. “There is every reason to believe that Donald Trump would seek to use criminal enforcement and the F.B.I. as leverage for his personal and political ends in a second term,” said Peter Keisler, a founder of the conservative Federalist Society who was an acting attorney general for President George W. Bush, capturing a common sentiment we heard.

Imposing his will

How would a politically motivated prosecution unfold? With help from our colleagues, we created this digital feature showing the steps Trump could take to jail his adversaries.

Here’s how it could start: Justice Department leaders nominated by the president typically set up a task force to investigate a set of allegations. With a handpicked group of F.B.I. agents and prosecutors, Trump’s appointees could open an inquiry into, say, Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump. Even if Garland is never indicted or convicted, defending himself will cost him lots of money and hurt his reputation. In some ways, Trump will have successfully punished his enemies just by naming them as targets.

It’s possible for F.B.I. agents and D.O.J. career lawyers to block a case from going forward by telling their superiors that they don’t have enough evidence, resigning, leaking to the press or notifying Congress. But that demands a lot of them. For some, it will be simpler just to follow orders by seeking the desired indictment from a grand jury.

Trump could also fire en masse career D.O.J. employees who might stand in the way. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for the next Republican administration, recommends removing civil-service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees who supervise other government workers. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, but CNN found that at least 140 people who worked in his administration had contributed to the report.

“We don’t know what will happen,” Keisler acknowledged about the implications of Trump’s re-election for the rule of law. “But the risk is more concrete, with a higher probability, than in any election in my lifetime.”

Read our story about why legal experts are worried about a Trump presidency.

More on the election

• Melania Trump, in a new memoir, says she supports abortion rights, The Guardian reported. “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote.
• Tim Walz acknowledged misspeaking at the debate about his time in Hong Kong and about meeting with victims of gun violence. “I need to be clearer,” he said.
• At the debate, JD Vance seemed to retreat from his proposal to separate healthy and sick people in insurance markets, which could cause disruptions for people with pre-existing conditions
• Trump is “joking around” when he calls Harris stupid, the Republican Party chair — who is also Trump’s daughter-in-law — said.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Jan. 6 Case

• Jack Smith, the special counsel, revealed new evidence about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in a legal brief. A judge made the brief public.
• According to Smith, Trump responded, “So what?” when an aide told him that Mike Pence’s life was in danger on Jan. 6.
• The judge must decide how much of Smith’s indictment complies with a recent Supreme Court ruling that gives presidents broad immunity. The brief argues that Trump can be prosecuted because his actions were those of a candidate.

Helene Aftermath

• Biden viewed damage in the Carolinas from the air and ordered the Pentagon to deploy up to 1,000 troops to help recovery efforts. Harris surveyed damage in Georgia and handed out meals at a food distribution center.
• At least 183 people died in the storm, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina.
• FEMA doesn’t have enough funding to make it through the rest of the hurricane season, Biden’s homeland security secretary said. Lawmakers of both parties have urged Congress to pass more aid.
• Over the past decade, North Carolina has loosened its building regulations. Those rules likely made the storm’s damage worse.

Middle East

• Israel may be ready to risk all-out war with Iran. Read why.
• Biden said he wouldn’t support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites in retaliation for missile attacks this week. “They should respond in proportion,” he said of Israel.
• Strikes near the heart of Beirut, Lebanon killed six people, the health authorities there said. See maps of the fighting.
• Some people are worried about nuclear war. But experts say Iran would have a year of hard work to master the basics of building a deliverable atomic bomb.
• Iran’s barrage of missiles against Israel was ineffectual but appeared calculated to maintain solidarity among Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

More International News

• In South Africa, a white farm owner and two of his workers were accused of shooting two Black women and then feeding their bodies to pigs.
• A drugmaker agreed to allow generic pharmaceutical companies to make and sell its groundbreaking H.I.V. drug at lower prices in developing countries. Many middle-income countries were left out of the deal, however.
• At least 60 people drowned in Nigeria when a boat carrying passengers to a religious celebration capsized.
• Mexico’s military shot and killed six migrants. Some in the country are concerned about powerful armed forces that operate with little oversight.

• Companies in Japan, which for centuries was mostly closed off to immigrants, are learning to embrace foreign workers.

Other Big Stories

• A hurricane in the Atlantic has quickly reached Category 3 strength. It’s over open water, and doesn’t currently pose a threat to land.
• The mother of the Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s children claims he abused their youngest son.
• San Francisco topped 90 degrees this week. Those temperatures are rare there — and rarer still in October.
• OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, more than doubled its valuation to $157 billion after a new fund-raising deal.

Opinions

America has a housing shortage. Instead of building affordable housing, the U.S. needs to make it cheaper to buy existing homes, Yuliya Panfil and Craig Richardson write.

Vladimir Putin likes to make threats, but he is unlikely to use nuclear weapons against NATO countries, Lawrence Freedman argues.

The misogyny of Gen Z men has been overstated, Jessica Grose writes.

Here are columns by Pamela Paul on Trump’s recent good luck, and Charles Blow on Harris’s sorority.

MORNING READS

Best gelato ever: A writer went on an odyssey to find a cone she couldn’t forget.

Literary guide: Read your way around Hawaii.

Nightlife: Three men died recently after leaving clubs in an industrial area of Brooklyn. The police say social media rumors about a serial killer are without evidence.

Feeling sick? Here’s how to determine whether it’s wise to exercise.

Ozempic: Can weight loss drugs cure eating disorders? Some doctors are trying to find out.

Lives Lived: As a third baseman with the New York Giants, Ozzie Virgil Sr. became the first Dominican-born player in the major leagues. Two years later, Virgil became the Detroit Tigers’ first Black player. He died at 92.

SPORTS

M.L.B.: Three of the Wild Card series resulted in sweeps. The underdog Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals advanced, along with the San Diego Padres. The New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers close out their series today.

N.F.L.: The New York Jets may land the wide receiver Davante Adams in a trade with the Las Vegas Raiders.

Racing: Michael Jordan, who co-owns 23XI Racing, is part of a federal lawsuit that could change how NASCAR operates. It’s a chance for Jordan to grow his sports legacy, our columnist writes.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The breaded, fried chicken tender as we know it was invented 50 years ago. It has, since then, become ubiquitous: a fixture of school lunches, gas stations, stadiums and all-night diners. The tender has become a symbol with fluid meaning, Pete Wells writes, an expression of unadventurous dining or an icon of unpretentious American taste. Read about how the chicken tender conquered America.

More on culture

• The “Succession” star Sarah Snook will make her Broadway debut next year in a one-woman adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
• Cassettes are making a comeback, but manufacturers have largely stopped making tape decks. Listeners are finding creative solutions.
• Late night hosts joked about a strangely chill vice-presidential debate.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

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Prevent toilet bowl stains with a spray.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were mathematic and thematic.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

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