Former United States president Donald Trump has hinted at a possible plan of using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department to target his political rivals if he comes back in power again next year.
His striking comments come during an interview with the Spanish-language television network Univision when the host Enrique Acevedo quizzed him about legal troubles and more. The interview aired Thursday night.
The host asked, “You say they’ve weaponised the justice department, they weaponised the FBI. Would you do the same if you’re re-elected?”
In reply, Trump said: “They’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse. They’ve released the genie out of the box.”
“When you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election. They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponisation,” Trump added.
He further said, “But yeah they have done something that allows the next party, I mean if somebody, if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, mostly they would be out of business. They’d be out. They’d be out of the election.”
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Overall, the former president is facing 91 federal and state accusations in connection with suspected election involvement, mishandling of confidential data, and falsifying company records. However, he has denied all the charges.
Despite all the legal woes, he has emerged stronger in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Hence, the rivals have been coming at Trump more than ever.
Recently, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Trump was hitting at an authoritarian agenda and also compared him to Adolf Hitler. Her remarks came even before the Trump’s Univision interview aired on Thursday. She said on ABC’s The View: “Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word.”
(With inputs from agencies)
