唐纳德·特朗普这是他第三次竞选白宫“报应”如果当选，这是他的核心议程。
“对于努力工作的美国人来说，11月5日将是我们新的解放日，”特朗普在今年的保守派政治行动会议上说。“但对于那些霸占了我们政府的骗子、作弊者、欺诈者、审查者和骗子来说，这将是他们的审判日。”
潜在的目标包括前众议员利兹·切尼和其他批评他努力推翻2020年失败的人。他最近表示，切尼和调查他的众议院委员会成员“应该坐牢”，尽管他们没有被指控犯有任何罪行。
去年，特朗普在被起诉后抱怨司法部“武器化”，他表示将任命一名特别检察官追踪总统乔·拜登和他的家人。
“唐纳德·特朗普的竞选策略一直是说一切都很混乱，世界是一个危险的地方，国家正在分崩离析，乔·拜登是一个无能的领导人，拯救国家的唯一方法是投票给特朗普，”德克萨斯大学政治修辞学历史学家詹妮弗·默西卡说&M大学。“这对他来说并不稀奇。自2016年以来，他一直在这么说。但这一次的策略更加黑暗。”
“他真的想为2020年的损失报仇，”她补充说，“他非常擅长使用语言作为武器。”
但如果特朗普当选，他能在实现这一愿景方面走多远?或者这在多大程度上只是为了激怒他的支持者，其中许多人似乎渴望这样做拥抱他的信息。
福特汉姆法律伦理专家布鲁斯·格林说:“答案是视情况而定检查过的2018年的这一期。
至少，特朗普所描述的惩罚运动需要对现代司法部进行重大重塑，司法部的独立传统可以追溯到水门事件后的时代。
据格林说，理查德·尼克松水门事件后司法部制定的内部政策试图将政治与执法分开，两党总统此后一直遵守这一构想-直到特朗普。
但格林指出，这些政策没有被法律编纂，如果特朗普任命一位接受他的全面总统权力和自由裁量权理论的司法部长，可能会对他们认为的敌人展开调查。
即便如此，仍有后备措施来阻止特朗普更尖锐的威胁。像过去一样，非政治任命的DOJ官员和检察官可能会发动叛乱。仍然需要提供不法行为的证据，法院可以驳回缺乏足够犯罪证据的出于政治动机的案件。
格林说:“因此，你将拥有我们的司法程序所产生的任何传统限制，包括宪法和法规，但你不会拥有我们指望司法部行使的看门职能。”
还值得注意的是，特朗普在上届政府期间试图针对他的政治对手，并面临阻力。
他对。。。生气杰夫·赛辛斯塞申斯回避了DOJ对俄罗斯干预2016年大选的调查选举。在各种社交媒体帖子中，他提到了塞申斯应该关注的人，包括时任美国联邦调查局导演詹姆斯·科米、希拉里和巴拉克·奥巴马。
解雇塞申斯后，特朗普在比尔·巴尔身上找到了许多人认为更友好的盟友。巴尔对特别顾问罗伯特·穆勒的俄罗斯报告进行了框定，许多人表示，这份报告的条款比调查结果更有利于特朗普。他还因干预政府起诉特朗普首任国家安全顾问迈克尔·弗林的案件以及建议对特朗普的长期盟友罗杰·斯通从轻判决而受到审查。这些行动导致许多民主党人和前DOJ官员谴责巴尔领导下的部门政治化。
但当特朗普在2020年11月输给拜登后敦促巴尔和司法部推动对选举欺诈的叙述时，司法部长和其他人拒绝支持。时任副总统迈克·彭斯是特朗普的忠实拥护者，他也拒绝了特朗普在2021年1月6日认证期间单方面拒绝选举结果的要求。
布鲁金斯学会(Brookings Institution)治理研究高级研究员伊莱恩·卡马尔克(Elaine Kamarck)表示，她相信，如果特朗普试图利用他的办公室追捕敌人或采取其他报复行动，他将再次被阻止。
“开国元勋们期待出现唐纳德·特朗普，”卡马克说。“他们建立了一个制衡体系，到目前为止还行之有效。如果唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)获胜，如何才能消除这种制衡?需要国会的60名参议员和众议院的绝大多数参议员以及法院的全面支持才能开始拆除。我认为目前不会发生这种情况，在他必须做的四年内也不会发生。”
“换句话说，”卡马克说，“我们还不是一个香蕉共和国，即使他想让我们成为一个。”
特朗普竞选团队发言人张致恒回应专家的评论称，报复将需要DOJ前所未有的政治化。他告诉美国广播公司新闻，“正如特朗普总统一再表示的那样，最好的报复是美国人民的全面成功。”
Trump's dark 'retribution' pledge at center of 2024 bid, but can he make it reality?
Donald Trump, in his third run for the White House, has made"retribution"central to his agenda if elected.
"For hard-working Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day," Trump said as he headlined this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. "But for the liars, and cheaters, and fraudsters, and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their Judgment Day."
Potential targets include former Rep. Liz Cheney and other individuals critical of his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat. He recently said Cheney and fellow members of the House committee that investigated him "should go to jail" despite the fact they've not been accused of any crimes.
Last year, as he complained of "weaponization" of the Justice Department after being indicted, Trump said he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after PresidentJoe Bidenand his family.
"Donald Trump's campaign strategy has been to say that everything is chaotic, that the world is a dangerous place and the nation is falling apart, that Joe Biden is an incompetent leader and the only way to save the nation is to vote for Trump," said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. "That's not unusual for him. He has been saying that since 2016. But the strategy has been darker this time around."
"He really wants to avenge his loss in 2020," she added, "and he is very good at using language as a weapon."
But how far could Trump go, if elected, in carrying out such a vision? Or how much is it just designed to rile up his supporters, many of whom appear eager toembracehis message.
"The answer is, it depends," said Bruce Green, a Fordham Law ethics expert whoexaminedthis exact issue back in 2018.
At the very least, a retribution campaign as Trump has described would require a significant reshaping of the modern-day Justice Department, which has a tradition of independence dating back to the post-Watergate era.
Internal policies enacted at the department after the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal sought to separate politics from law enforcement, and presidents of both parties have since abided by that construct -- until Trump, according to Green.
But those policies aren't codified by law, Green noted, and if Trump were to appoint an attorney general who embraced his theory of sweeping presidential power and discretion, investigations could be launched into perceived enemies.
Even then, there are still backstops in place to deter Trump's more pointed threats. DOJ officials and prosecutors who are not politically appointed could threaten revolt, as has happened in the past. Evidence of wrongdoing would still need to be presented, and courts could reject politically-motivated cases that lack sufficient proof of a crime.
"So, you'd have whatever the traditional limitations are created by our judicial process, including the Constitution and statutes, but you wouldn't have the gatekeeping function that we've counted on the Justice Department to exercise," Green said.
It's also worth noting Trump tried to target his political foes during his last administration and faced resistance.
He fumed atJeff Sessions, his first attorney general, when Sessions recused himself from the DOJ's investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016election. In various social media posts, he named people Sessions should go after, including then-FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
After firing Sessions, Trump found what many believed to be a friendlier ally in Bill Barr. Barr framed special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report in what many said were more favorable terms for Trump than the findings warranted. He also drew scrutiny for intervening in the government's case against Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn and for suggesting a lighter sentence for longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. The actions led many Democrats andformer DOJ officialsto decry the politicization of the department under Barr's leadership.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr step off Air Force One upon arrival at Andr...Show more
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
But when Trump urged Barr and the Department of Justice to push a narrative of election fraud after his loss to Biden in November 2020, the attorney general and others declined to fall in line. Then-Vice President Mike Pence, a loyalist to Trump, also resisted his demands to unilaterally reject the election results during the certification on Jan. 6, 2021.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said she believed Trump would be stopped again if he tried to use his office to go after enemies or other acts of retribution.
"The Founding Fathers anticipated a Donald Trump," Kamarck said. "They built a system of checks and balances, and it's working so far. If Donald Trump won, what would it take to dismantle that checks and balances? It would take a clean sweep of the Congress -- 60 senators in the Senate and an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives -- and the courts to start the dismantling. And I don't see that happening at this time and I don't see it happening within the four years that he has to do it."
"In other words," Kamarck said, "we're not a banana republic yet even if he'd like to make us one."
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in response to expert comments that retribution would require never-before-seen politicization of the DOJ, told ABC News, "As President Trump has repeatedly said, the best retribution is the overall success of the American people."
