Trump threatens federal investigations of his political opponents if he retakes the White House

Former President Donald Trump hinted that if he gets reelected he would use the government to investigate his political opponents the same way the Biden Justice Department went after him.

“If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse. It could certainly happen in reverse,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Univision that aired Thursday. “What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box. You understand that, they’ve done something that nobody thought would happen.”

He said the “pathetic” indictments against him were brought so that the Biden administration could win an election. He also said the administration has “weaponized” the Department of Justice and the FBI.

“They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponization, and the people aren’t going to stand for it,” he said. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ Mostly what that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They’d be out, they’d be out of the election.”

The former president has been indicted in four separate cases this year, both federal and state. The Justice Department has charged him in Florida for mishandling classified documents and in Washington for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

He is also facing charges in New York for hush money payments to cover up extramarital affairs and in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former president said the indictments have “actually been helpful from the standpoint of getting elected.”

He called the charges against him “political persecution [and a] political hoax.”

“I’m probably the only guy ever indicted whose poll numbers have shot up through the roof,” he said.

Polls have shown that Mr. Trump leads the other Republican candidates by wide margins and is outperforming President Biden in several battleground states.