Donald Trump’s demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating potential criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence – but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts.
At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media, Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as “thugs” and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are “racist”, language designed to inflame racial tension.
He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of the billionaire financier George Soros, who is Jewish.
Trump’s drive to undercut four criminal inquiries he faces is reaching a fever pitch, as a Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key role in a $130,000 hush-money payment in 2016 to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair.
In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia, calling them “racist”, even as he simultaneously battles to win the White House again.
In a broader attack on the four state and federal investigations, at a Texas rally on Saturday Trump condemned the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system”, while on his Truth Social platform last week he warned of “possible death and destruction” if he is charged in the hush-money inquiry.
But now Trump’s incendiary attacks against the federal and state inquiries are prompting warnings that he could be fueling violence, as he did on January 6, with bogus claims that the 2020 was stolen from him and a mob of his backers attacked the Capitol, leading to at least five deaths.
“Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, amplified through his social media postings and his high-decibel fear-mongering in Texas, pose clear physical dangers to prosecutors and investigators,” said the former acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department, Paul Pelletier. “With Trump’s actions in promoting the January 6 insurrection serving as a cautionary tale, the potential for violent reactions to any of his charges cannot be understated.”
Ex-prosecutors see Trump reverting to tactics he has often deployed in legal and political battles.
Trump’s invective, say experts, will not deter prosecutors as they separately weigh fraud, obstruction and other charges related to January 6 and other issues, but echo scare tactics he has used before – as in his two impeachments – and may help Trump’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee by angering the base that could influence primary outcomes.
“None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump’s own crimes. A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name-calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan.
That may explain why Trump has received more political cover from three conservative House committee chairs, who joined his effort to intimidate the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, by launching investigations to obtain his records and testimony, threats that Bragg and legal experts have denounced as political stunts and improper.
The legal stakes for Trump are enormous, and unprecedented for a former president, as the criminal inquiries have been gaining momentum, with more key witnesses who have past or present ties to Trump testifying before grand juries, and others getting subpoenas.
Two investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith are separately looking into possible charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding and defrauding the US government, as he schemed with top allies to block Joe Biden from taking office, and potential obstruction and other charges tied to Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.
Further, the Fulton county Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis, has said decisions are “imminent” about potentially charging Trump and others who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win there in 2020 with erroneous claims of fraud.
Much of the investigation’s work has involved a special grand jury that reportedly has recommended several indictments, with a focus on Trump’s high-pressure call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, beseeching him to just “find” 11,780 votes to help block Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing, and denounced the inquiries as “witch-hunts”.
Little wonder, though, that Trump’s squadron of lawyers has lately filed a batch of motions in Georgia and Washington, with mixed success, to slow prosecutors as they move forward in gathering evidence from key witnesses and mull charges against Trump.
“Blustering in court or in the media about the supposed bias or racism of the Fulton county and Manhattan county prosecutors will not convince a court to remove a democratically elected prosecutor, and certainly the Republicans in the House of Representatives have no legal authority ability to influence the course of criminal justice in New York state proceedings,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York’s southern district.
Green said: “None of Trump’s moves, such as calling prosecutors racists, are likely to throw any of the prosecutors off their game: prosecutors tend to be focused, determined and thick-skinned.”
Likewise, ex-US attorney in Georgia Michael Moore told the Guardian the Trump attacks on the two black prosecutors are “completely baseless. The charges of racism against the prosecutors is more of an indication of the weakness of his claims than most anything else he has said.”
Moore scoffed, too, at the moves by Trump’s House Republican allies.
He said: “It’s rich to me that the Republicans in the House claim to be the party of limited government, but as soon as they get in power and look like they might lose another election, they immediately use their big government power to meddle in a matter that purely belongs to the local jurisdiction.”
NYU law professor Stephen Gillers said he sees similar dynamics at play in Trump’s tactics.
“Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it. But he can undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters. I see what he’s doing now as aimed at them, just as he tried to discredit the election returns in their eyes and anger them with baseless charges over the ‘steal’'.”
The weakness of Trump’s legal moves was revealed in two court rulings in DC requiring testimony before grand juries from former top aides including ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the January 6 inquiry, and one of his current lawyers, Evan Corcoran, in the classified documents case.
The two rulings should give a good boost to the special counsel in his separate investigations of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss on January 6 when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s win, about which Meadows must now testify, and Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House, about which Corcoran has to testify.
As the four investigations intensify, more aggressive moves by Trump and his lawyers to derail potential charges in Georgia, Manhattan and from the special counsel are expected before, as well as after, any charges may be filed.
“If I were on the prosecution teams in Manhattan or Georgia, I would expect Trump to assert every defense he can think of, including accusing the prosecutors of misconduct,” McQuade said.
A judge on Monday ordered Willis to respond by 1 May to the Trump team’s motion seeking to bar her from further investigating or charging Trump, and wants all testimony from 75 witnesses – including Meadows and Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani – before the special grand jury rejected.
The judge’s order was in response to a Trump legal motion that McQuade said “appears to be baseless”.
Former Watergate prosecutor Philip Lacovara told the Guardian that Trump’s lawyers are deploying different legal tactics in the investigations.
“The Georgia strategy is partly a strategy of delay,” in which the Trump team is “raising dozens and dozens of objections, many of which are specious, in the hope that one will be sufficient to work on appeal and to keep him out of jail,” Lacovara said.
In Manhattan, he added, they are trying “to create the impression that this is a highly visible political stunt to exclude Trump from running”.
That tactic could help in “trying to pollute the jury pool” since a hung jury would be good for Trump. “All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot.”
Former DoJ officials and experts expect Trump and his lawyers will keep up a frenzied stream of hyperbolic attacks and legal actions.
“This is more of what we saw during the election,” said former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served in the George HW Bush administration. “He throws up gibberish and obstruction.”
