Former President Donald Trump conjured a vision of a second term that would function as a tool of personal revenge, and become even more authoritarian than his first, when he vowed to pardon US Capitol insurrectionists if he runs for the White House again and wins.
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His pledge at a Texas rally Saturday was accompanied by a call for demonstrations if prosecutors in New York, who are probing Trump's business practices, and those in Georgia, looking into his attempts to reverse his election loss in the state, do anything that he defined. as wrong or illegal. The comments underscore Trump's obsession with delusional lies that he won the 2020 election, and his determination to put that falsehood at the core of the Republican worldview. As was often the case during his four years in office, Trump's pardons threat shows that he still makes no distinction between his personal goals and the national interest or rule of law.
But the former President's new rhetorical outburst also at times hinted at concern with his own legal position, and comes at a moment when various criminal and congressional lines of investigation seem to be tightening around him. The House select committee probing the January 6, 2021, riot has now penetrated deep inside Trump's West Wing inner circle, and he lost a Supreme Court bid to keep key documents secret. The likelihood of a damning accounting from the committee, bristling with new details about Trump's attempt to destroy American democracy, is growing, although the GOP has sought to thwart it at every turn.
As well as further threatening US democracy on Saturday night, Trump was preoccupied with his personal legal exposure. He fired off a wild attack, which looked to be racially-motivated, on two Black New York prosecutors investigating whether his business empire deliberately falsified accounts to get preferential treatment on loans and income taxes. He also alluded to potential legal peril he's facing in Fulton County, Georgia, where a Black district attorney has been granted a special grand jury to examine his attempt to steal President Joe Biden's win in the state.