‘We all have our eyes wide open’: Trump critics brace for dark time of retribution

Members of Congress and other US public officials targeted for “retribution” by Donald Trump say they are taking extraordinary security precautions for themselves and their families and are now bracing for scenarios as extreme as the possibility of being rounded up and arrested, after Trump returns to the White House.

Two Democratic House members who have been vocal in their criticisms of Trump and his policy agenda told the Guardian they and their colleagues are preparing for “some pretty surreal and dystopic scenarios”. They range from bogus investigations or tax audits of present and former members of the federal government to out-and-out violence inspired by Trump’s rhetoric of revenge.

“I hope none of my Democratic colleagues become American corollaries to Alexander Navalny,” said Congressman Jared Huffman of California, referring to the Russian opposition leader and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who survived being poisoned before dying in an Arctic prison.

“[My colleagues in the House] are thinking about legal defenses against a weaponized Department of Justice,” Huffman added. “They may have to be ready to be arrested and rounded up. They have to have family plans protecting themselves in ways I don’t even like to talk about publicly…

“I have so many colleagues living under constant violent threats toward them and their families and their staff … These are dark times. We all have our eyes wide open.”

On the campaign trail and in social media posts, Trump has invoked the same names over and over again – among them former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, House member and Senator-elect Adam Schiff, special prosecutor Jack Smith, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and former FBI director James Comey – and said they should be arrested and prosecuted for treason and other crimes.

A Trump-friendly lawyer reported to be in line for an administration job, Mike Davis, has vowed to send journalists and disloyal former Republicans “to the gulag”.

Separately, a Trump loyalist affiliated with the disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn has circulated a “deep state target list”, vowing retribution against the congressional committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, intelligence community signatories of a letter accusing Republicans of falling for Russian disinformation about President Biden’s son Hunter, and those involved in the two congressional efforts to impeach Trump, among others.

Also listed are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Michigan governor Gretchen Wittmer.

Dan Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York who worked closely with Schiff as the lead lawyer on Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, said he was not concerned primarily for his own well-being. “I dare them to try to weaponise the justice department to come after me. That would not work out well for them,” he said.

Instead, his immediate concern was for members of the federal bureaucracy, including intelligence and national security officials who turned against Trump during his first White House term, because there were many more methods of going after them.

A determined administration, Goldman said, could demote or fire them if they are still in government employment, or consider suspending their security clearances, or strip them of health and pension benefits. They could be subject to libel lawsuits – a number already have been – which would tie them up in court and lumber them with legal expenses even if the cases were ultimately dismissed. Or they could be the target of Internal Revenue Service auditors or criminal prosecutors at the Department of Justice.

“The list of the different ways he [Trump] could exact retribution is almost unending if he has loyalists at the top of these various agencies,” Goldman said.

This is not the first time Trump has talked about exacting revenge against people he perceives as being against him. During his first term as president, he frequently described the news media as “the enemy of the people” and, according to aides, became so incensed by insiders who either leaked documents or quit so they could denounce him publicly that he was overheard calling for their arrest and even their execution.

Olivia Troye, who worked in the Trump White House as a national security adviser to Vice-President Mike Pence, said Trump was particularly incensed by an anonymous op-ed that appeared in the New York Times in 2018 and described a “resistance” within the administration that was working to rein in Trump’s worst instincts.

Troye remembered Trump calling the op-ed writer a “traitor”. When the writer later revealed himself as Miles Taylor, a recently departed chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security, he felt compelled to go into hiding, and drained his bank account on bodyguards and lawyers.

The difference this time, those targeted by Trump and their lawyers say, is that the incoming administration shows signs of being much better prepared, more ambitious in scope, and more determined to carry out Trump’s agenda to the letter.

“This is not 2017 when these guys were disorganized,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer with a long list of national security and intelligence-world clients, many of them worried they are now in the firing line. “They [the Trump loyalists] have been there before, they know what they want to do and they know how to do it.”

Those who have seen their names on target lists are also better prepared than last time. Some, Zaid said, are planning to leave the country to see how the first couple of months of the new administration play out. Others have prepared go bags, moved money around so their assets cannot be seized, identified safe houses, hired security guards, and more.

“We have to prepare for all sorts of worst-case scenarios so we’re not caught flat-footed,” Zaid added. “I’m not going to be naive like my ancestors were 90 years ago in Germany. I’m not going to think, I’ve been loyal to the country and they’re not going to come after me.”

The threat of political violence is already palpable. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic congressman from Florida, has reported that police stopped a former felon with a rifle and body armor from carrying out a plot on his life the day before the presidential election.

Fred Wellman, who was briefly head of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said that on a couple of occasions he had seen a man sitting outside his house in the St Louis suburbs late at night and had to call the police to chase him away.

Zaid, the lawyer, said that in 2021 someone mirrored his phone number and called his local police department in Maryland to claim armed men with explosives had taken him hostage in his house. The aim appeared to be to have heavily armed police burst into his house and create chaos. The only reason it didn’t happen, he said, was because the police knew who he was and understood that the call was fake.

Such threats have been amplified by efforts by far-right activists to publish the addresses and phone number of people on target lists. And they have arguably become more likely as Trump himself amps up his rhetoric. In the run-up to the election he threatened long prison sentences for anyone he deemed to have “cheated” in the voting, threatened to use military force against liberal politicians he described as “the enemy within”, and relished the idea of Liz Cheney having rifles trained at her face.

“The Trump people are emboldened right now, that’s very clear,” Troye, the former national security staffer, said. “The American people are about to learn what exactly they’ve elected, even if they thought it was hyperbole and bluster … We’re watching the oligarchy come together here, and it’s really frightening.”

Some of the threats might well be bluster – Troye said the Trump loyalists she knew would enjoy simply knowing they were inside their adversaries’ heads – but many of those on target lists are taking them in deadly earnest anyway.

Now that controversial Trump loyalists have been nominated to key positions – firebrand congressman Matt Gaetz at the justice department, Fox news host Pete Hegseth at defense – they are particularly worried about the tools the administration might use to mount criminal prosecutions or even court martials.

Prosecutors, they said, might leap on a television appearance by a former national security official to allege a leak of classified information that falls foul of the Espionage Act. Or they might allege election interference based on political statements during the campaign. Or they might take advantage of a technicality under the uniform code of military justice that enables them to reclassify veterans as active-duty soldiers and try them for bad-mouthing their commander-in-chief.

“They can always find a crime where they need one,” said Wellman, the former Lincoln Project head who now works on veterans’ issues. Zaid, who represents him, concurred: “There are laws on the books that could be stretched.”

In a Washington where Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, Trump’s critics see little in the way of guardrails preventing the future president from pursuing his enemies in this way. “It is incumbent on those around him and on Republican elected officials to uphold their oath to the constitution and make sure our democracy continues to exist,” Goldman, the New York congressman said.

Asked what the prospects for this were, Goldman added: “I have not detected much of an appetite from my Republican colleagues.”