Trump vows investigations of Democratic district attorneys, if re-elected
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Former US president Donald Trump's promise to crack down on prosecutors in Democratic cities comes has he faces scrutiny from two district attorneys.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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NEW YORK - Former United States president Donald Trump said in an online campaign advertisement on Thursday that if he were re-elected, he would “completely overhaul” the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department and launch “sweeping civil rights investigations” into local district attorneys’ offices.
Trump’s three-minute ad promising to crack down on local prosecutors in Democratic cities – whom he described as soft-on-crime “Marxists” – came as he was facing intense scrutiny by two district attorneys in particular: Mr Alvin Bragg in New York City and Ms Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia.
In March, Mr Bragg unsealed a 34-count indictment
Ms Willis, in the meantime, is continuing to investigate Trump’s efforts to interfere with voting in her state
Although Trump did not mention either prosecutor by name, he has repeatedly lashed out at Mr Bragg and Ms Willis,
Both before and after the indictment of Trump was announced, Mr Bragg faced threats against his life, and a letter to him containing a white powder – later determined not to be dangerous – was found in the mailroom of his office.
Trump’s advertisement, which bore a screen title reading “Restoring Justice in America,” was in keeping with his strategy of attacking law enforcement officials who seek to hold him accountable – one he has used over and over in his decades in the spotlight.
Although Trump and his allies have often sought to undermine the FBI, which has taken part in multiple investigations of him in recent years, the advertisement was one of his most menacing threats yet against local prosecutors.
Trump said that district attorneys in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco should be subjected to federal subpoenas seeking e-mails and other records to determine whether they had “violated federal civil rights law” or engaged in “illegal racial discrimination”.
That appeared to echo the language of the investigations that the Justice Department has often undertaken against local police departments accused of racial bias.
Trump specifically called for an inquiry into the district attorney’s office in Travis County, Texas, which recently won a murder conviction against Daniel S Perry, a US Army sergeant who fatally shot a protester during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the summer of 2020.
The case has become a lightning rod for the right as Governor Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, has suggested that the guilty verdict was wrong, and said that he planned to pardon Perry for the killing. NYTIMES
