President-elect Donald Trump issued a series of unprecedented threats against his perceived foes throughout the election campaign that would have made Richard Nixon blush.
He suggested he would use the military against an “enemy from within,” arguing critics of the Supreme Court “should be put in jail” and that journalists who won’t give up their sources should be thrown in there with them, to name a just few.
Now, some of his critics are fretting that he’s ready to make good on them.
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One is even hiding at home, afraid Trump will soon mobilize the police.
“I’ll die right here on my f—ing house,” Michael Fanone, the retired police officer who was attacked during the January 6 insurrection and subsequently became a vocal critic of Trump, told The Washington Post. “I’m not going to be in some ‘Apprentice’ f—ing military tribunal.”
Fanone, who is holed up at his Virginia home, was alluding to Ivan Raiklin, a Trump surrogate and retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who has touted himself as Trump’s “future secretary of retribution.”
Raw Story reported in July that Raiklin had drafted a list of 350 people he wants arrested.
Fanone’s paranoia is also understandable: his mother was swatted earlier this year after he called Trump an “authoritarian.” She opened the door one night to a fully armed law enforcement team after someone falsely reported an active shooter at her address.
NBC News interviewed 10 other people who have crossed Trump, including former officials in his first administration, and they expressed varying degrees of alarm from a foreboding sense of dread to outright terror.
“I‘m worried that I’ll be targeted by him and a lot of people in his circle,” said Olivia Troye, a former Trump administration national security official who spoke out against the President-elect at this year’s Democratic National Committee. “They very much know who I am. And I’m concerned for my family.”
Troye told NBC, while she was boarding a plane recently, a passenger said to her, “Your days are numbered.”
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, another ally-turned-critic, said, “I assume there’s a long retribution list and I’m on it.”
Aquilino Gonell, a former law enforcement officer who, like Fanone, was assaulted by Trump supporters on January 6 told NBC, “I have to be vigilant. I mean, I have a family to take care of.”
Others fear attacks on their livelihood.
Larry Pfeiffer, a former chief of staff at the CIA who signed a 2020 letter that questioned the authenticity of emails found on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, said he fears that he and the 50 other security officials who signed the letter will have their security clearances revoked.
“There are colleagues of mine on that list who have clearances because they’re active members of companies that do business inside the intelligence community, and they will likely lose their post-government livelihoods if their clearances are pulled,” he told NBC.
In an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Vice President-elect JD Vance said those who signed the letter would have their privileges revoked “when we win.”
Adding to the worries of many is the fact that Trump will take office following a landmark Supreme Court decision that largely protects former presidents from being prosecuted for their decisions taken in office.
But—for all of Trump’s endless bluster—the president-elect and some of his allies have also said “revenge” will simply mean going about his term and proving those who doubted he could win again wrong.
“My revenge will be success,” Trump told Fox News in February.
Asked by Fox host Laura Ingraham in a separate appearance last month if he would go after his political foes while in office, Trump said no.
“I want to make this the most successful country in the world — that’s what I want to do,” he added.
MAGA House Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said he doesn’t believe prosecutors in any of the various investigations against Trump will be subject to reprisal.
“We’re the party who’s against going after your opponents using lawfare,” he told CNN.
For the time being, some Trump foes are nevertheless looking over their shoulders.
