Trump’s Retribution Revival Tour

Back in January 2024, Donald Trump made the case during an Iowa town hall that, as much as he might like to exact vengeance on his enemies, he would simply be too busy as president.

“I’m not going to have time for retribution,” he said then.

So much for that.

This week, the Trump administration indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued him for fraud, and arraigned James Comey, the former F.B.I. director who the president has feuded with for years. Plus, Trump called for the jailing of two Democratic officials, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, who have opposed his efforts to deploy the military there.

The president has certainly been busy securing a peace deal in Gaza, navigating a government shutdown and ordering extraordinary troop deployments in U.S. cities to support his immigration agenda. But, unshackled by the political calculations he made as a candidate in Iowa, Trump and his allies have made clear that targeting his perceived opponents for investigation and indictment is a priority.

A list of enemies

The notion that Trump is vengeful is hardly new to anyone who has paid attention to American politics over the past decade.

“My motto is always get even,” he wrote in a 2007 book. “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”

In 2016, just as he was securing the Republican presidential nomination for the first time, Trump mused that his favorite Bible verse was about “an eye for an eye.”

And while he demanded investigations of his foes and often got them during his first term, his campaign of retribution has only escalated in his second.

Late last month, Trump explicitly directed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to target both Comey and James in a social media post that The Wall Street Journal reported this week was actually meant to be a private message.

“We can’t delay any longer,” the president wrote in his message, which also urged the prosecution of Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, who is under investigation by the administration and formed a legal-defense fund over the summer.

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, was then sworn in as the interim U.S. attorney — giving her the power to bring such cases after her predecessor was forced out for failing to bring charges against Trump’s perceived adversaries. (Both Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress, and James, who was charged with mortgage fraud, say they are innocent and that the charges were motivated only by Trump’s grievances.)

Trump’s right-wing allies have delighted in the investigations and indictments. “Just the appetizers,” Mike Davis, a Trump ally and Republican lawyer, told Steve Bannon on his program after the James indictment, suggesting there will be more to come.

Democrats have warned about the eroding rule of law. “This kind of corruption is how authoritarians become dictators,” Representative Dan Goldman of New York wrote on X on Thursday.

A push that could come with political risk

For Trump, the political risks of his push for retribution are not just that he is seen as overreaching or stretching the law. It is that, by pursuing his personal grievances from the White House, he could be seen as selfish and distracted from the very things — the high and rising cost of living — that he said would be keeping him busy back in that Iowa town hall.

“We’re going to make this country so successful again,” he said then.

Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist who has worked on races up and down the ballot, said such risks are minimized because they come while Trump is notching achievements elsewhere.

“No one can say he’s distracted by personal grievance because someone distracted by personal grievance isn’t achieving something between Israelis and Palestinians,” Hunt said. “He has shown he can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

But other Republican strategists privately expressed concern that Trump could face political blowback by sending the National Guard to impose his agenda in blue cities and states, which some voters could perceive as overreach. The fear is that troop deployments are likelier to spook the suburban voters that the Republican Party needs than any charges or indictments brought against Democratic officials.

Most voters don’t think the country is “so successful” yet. Trump’s approval rating was underwater in the most recent New York Times/Siena poll. Voters are still sour on the economy. And 58 percent of voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction — including nearly two thirds of independent voters.

Democrats are already framing the president’s pursuit of his foes as an attempted distraction from a failure to focus on the cost-of-living challenges that brought voters his way.

“He’s unable and unwilling to deliver on that because he’s beholden to the very billionaires that are profiting off of that crisis,” Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on MSNBC on Friday. “So what he’s doing is focusing entirely on this agenda of punishment and cruelty.”

Mike DuHaime, a longtime Republican strategist, said that ultimately, the results of tangible policies will matter most when voters cast ballots next year.

“The voters who decide the midterms will care less about any of these theatrics, and more about tackling the policy promises he made, like fixing immigration and tackling inflation,” DuHaime said.

by the numbers

President Trump and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, have both accused each other of real estate fraud, but there is a big difference, Jonah Bromwich and Devlin Barrett write. The sum involved in her case is:

$18,933

A federal case involving such a small sum of money is highly unusual. By contrast, millions were at stake in the case James brought against Trump.

How Trump is using the Justice Department to target his enemies

Just keeping up with the exhaustive list of Trump enemies is exhausting.

The list is so long, and so overlapping, that on the day Comey was arraigned this week, another Trump foe was spotted outside the courthouse: Miles Taylor, a Homeland Security official during Trump’s first term whose criticisms infuriated him. Trump had ordered he be investigated earlier this year.

Beyond the indictments of Comey and James, Justice Department officials are also investigating Schiff. And prosecutors have been encouraged to look into a group funded by George Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s top financiers.

Here’s a visual guide to some of Trump’s targets.

An unusual request from the E.P.A.

Abortion pills have been a major focus of the anti-abortion movement, as growing numbers of women in states with abortion bans have turned to websites and underground networks that send them through the mail.

My colleagues Caroline Kitchener and Coral Davenport reported today that senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency directed a team of scientists over the summer to assess whether the government could develop methods for detecting traces of the pills in wastewater.

The scientists said they have no E.P.A.-approved methods for identifying the pills, which are called mifepristone, in water. But, Caroline and Coral write, they said new methods could be developed, although there is no sign right now that they are. Read more here.

Dug in

It is the tenth day of the government shutdown, and neither Democrats nor Republicans are showing signs of making concessions that would end their standoff.

My colleague Haiyun Jiang on Wednesday captured Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, as reporters peppered him with questions about the health care subsidies his party is pushing for. He shrugged, perhaps suggesting the onus was on Republicans to negotiate with him.