Donald Trump suggests he would use FBI to go after political rivals if elected in 2024

Former President Donald Trump suggested he would use the powers of the FBI and Justice Department to go after his political rivals if he wins the 2024 election.

Trump — who currently leads President Biden in six out of seven battleground states — made the indicative comment during an interview with Univision News journalist Enrique Acevedo Thursday.

“You say they’ve weaponized the justice department, they weaponized the FBI. Would you do the same if you’re re-elected?” Acevedo asked.

“They’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse,” Trump explained. “They’ve released the genie out of the box.”

The former Commander-in-Chief claimed that prosecutors had pursued indictments against him “in order to win an election” and that he would not rule out doing the same if he happened “to be president” again.

“When you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election. They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponization,” Trump told Acevedo.

“But yeah they have done something that allows the next party, I mean if somebody, 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 they would be out of business. They’d be out. They’d be out of the election,” he added.

During the sit-down interview, Trump called the indictments brought against him “pathetic” and that the American people understand what his rivals are trying to do to him.

“These are political indictments. These are Biden indictments, and the people get it. They really get it,” the ex-POTUS added. 

Special Counsel Jack Smith has brought forward two federal criminal cases against the 77-year-old former president for his alleged involvement in the classified documents case and the 2020 election interference case.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 counts of allegedly concealing national security material at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office — and then lying to federal authorities who sought the documents.

Outside of federal indictments, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg slapped Trump with 34 counts for alleged hush money payments to keep porn star Stormy Daniels and others quiet during the 2016 cycle.

The 45th president has denied wrongdoing across the board.

On Friday, a federal judge in Florida denied Trump’s request to move his trial on charges of mishandling national security information until after the 2024 election — but said she would reconsider the case schedule early next year.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that “the quantity of discovery in this case remains exceedingly voluminous, even more so than initially thought.”

As election season approaches, the Republican presidential primary front-runner is up on the Democratic incumbent by between one and nine percentage points head-to-head in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina, regardless of whether third-party candidates are included in the survey.

All those states, except for North Carolina, narrowly went to Biden, 80, in 2020.