Who Is On Donald Trump’s Revenge List?
One of the central themes of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has been the desire for vengeance against those who he believes have done him and the country wrong. “I am your retribution,” has become a staple of his stump speech, and it’s not just rhetoric. While Trump and his allies have decried what they say is the weaponization of the justice system against him, they have also made it clear that if he regains the White House, they absolutely plan to use the presidency and the Department of Justice to retaliate against their enemies — and it won’t just be Joe Biden. Below is a look at who Trump and his advisers have indicated they’ll target for revenge, including threats both explicit and vague.
Joe Biden and family
Trump has repeatedly threatened to weaponize the power of the presidency to target Joe Biden and his family. “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” he said after one of his indictments in 2023.
Trump insists that the Bidens are guilty of various crimes, including corruption, and he makes it clear that prosecuting them will be revenge for the various cases against him since leaving office.
“Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them, and it would be easy because it’s Joe Biden,” Trump told Sean Hannity in an interview early this month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg
Plans to go after DA Alvin Bragg have been underway since well before he charged Trump in the hush-money case, per a Rolling Stone report from March 2023:
Recently, “I have been [present] when the [former] president has asked people to draw up a plan for how to deal with Alvin Bragg and how the Department of Justice could respond to Bragg’s ‘illegal’ investigation of the president,” one of the sources familiar with the situation recalls. “This happened after we casually discussed with him some of our ideas for how this could work, and how it corresponds with his bigger agenda for ‘law and order’ policies.” …
Policy advisers have told [Trump] that, should he return to the White House, his next Justice Department should unleash its civil rights division against Bragg. In this scenario, Bragg would be investigated and perhaps charged not only for allegedly politically motivated actions against Trump, but for supposedly “racist law enforcement practices,” sources recount. (Trump himself has adopted a bizarre habit of regularly calling Bragg a “racist,” typically without offering further explanation.)
Soon after being convicted in the hush-money case, Trump was asked in an interview whether he’d prosecute Bragg as president. “Alvin Bragg did some very bad things,” he responded, but that “I’m not going to say anything one way or the other” and “we’re going to see what happens.”
New York Judge Juan Merchan
Trump has repeatedly publicly attacked Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the Manhattan hush-money trial in which a jury convicted Trump on 34 felon counts of falsifying business records. Trump has called Merchan “corrupt” and “a devil” and “crooked.” Shortly after the verdict, Trump said:
He’s a crooked judge. And you’ll understand that. And I say that knowing that it’s very dangerous for me to say that. And I don’t mind because I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and to save our Constitution.
New York Attorney General Leticia James
Trump has also repeatedly attacked Tish James, who filed an ultimately successful civil fraud lawsuit against the former president over his business practices and has said she should be “looked at” by authorities and that the civil fraud case was “election interference.” In March, Rolling Stone reported that some in Trump’s orbit were already plotting ways to enact revenge along those lines if he’s elected president:
Various lawyers in the MAGA upper crust — including several close to the former president — have been crafting specific, novel legal schemes that a Justice Department could use to go after the New York prosecutor, three people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. One such proposal, two sources say, would involve accusing James of attempting to illegally interfere in the 2024 presidential race.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron
Another possible target is Judge Engoron, who presided over the recent civil fraud trial against Trump in New York and ultimately ordered him to pay $355 million in damages. Trump has repeatedly called Engoron “crooked” and “corrupt” and has said that the judge “ought to be seriously looked at” by authorities.
Special Counsel Jack Smith and anyone involved in the federal Trump investigations/indictments
Rolling Stone reported in August 2023 that a broad team of Trump allies — including MAGA-world lawyers, former Trump administration officials, and various Trump advisers — were building a list of people to target if Trump regains the White House, including Smith:
This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.
Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. …
In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.
Members of the House January 6 Select Committee
On June 6, Trump attacked the committee and accused its members of committing crimes in a Truth Social post, writing at the end of the post: “INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE FOR ILLEGALLY DELETING AND DESTROYING ALL OF THEIR ‘FINDING!’”
Journalists and media organizations
Trump continues to attack members of the media, or at least those he views as unfriendly to him and his causes, as “the enemy of the people.” In a September 2023 Truth Social post, Trump attacked NBC News, MSNBC, and the organizations’ parent company, Comcast, before adding:
I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!
During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast late last year, former Trump National Security Council member Kash Patel, who according to the New York Times will likely have a senior national security role in a second Trump administration, vowed that the administration would go after journalists. Though Patel said a second Trump administration would “follow the facts and the law,” he also said:
We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.
Nonprofits and charities that support migrants
In a November 2023 Truth Social post, Trump vowed that, “For any radical left charity, non-profit, or so called aid organizations supporting these caravans and illegal aliens, we will prosecute them for their participation in human trafficking, child smuggling, and every other crime we can find…”
Retired Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley
In September 2023, Trump posted a message on Truth Social attacking Milley over phone calls the former top general made to China in October 2020 and January 2021 (two days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol) offering reassurance that Trump was not planning to attack China. Milley later said that both calls, at the time, were cleared by senior Trump administration Defense officials. But in his Truth Social post, Trump suggested Milley had in fact committed treason, writing that:
This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!
Employees at the National Archives
Per a Rolling Stone report in October 2022, Trump has expressed an interest in purging the federal agency — which he has said is “woke and broken” —after it sought to recover classified documents Trump took from the White House at the end of his presidency:
Trump has told close associates that he wants to gut the nonpartisan historical agency, which the former president believes is full of anti-MAGA subversives, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump has said he plans to make it a priority if he wins a second term, the sources say.
In some of these conversations, the former president has referenced specific officials — all installed during Democratic administrations — who he’d want to immediately “get rid of” and have replaced with pliable loyalists. One of these sources says that it was clear from the conversation that someone in Trump’s orbit had been slipping him names or lists of potential targets.
Mark Zuckerberg
In a February Truth Social post, Trump accused the Facebook/Meta CEO of interference in the 2020 election, citing an unproven allegation that the billionaire attempted to help Democrats via a nonpartisan nonprofit which donated millions of dollars to help bolster the operations of 2,500 local election offices ahead of the election.
“He cheated on the Election(s). The whole system is RIGGED. Why isn’t he being prosecuted?” Trump wrote.
This post will be updated.