President-elect Donald Trump's allies have been sending a clear message to law enforcement officials seeking to hold him accountable: do so at your own peril.
Speaking to a right-wing podcaster on Thursday, Mike Davis, one of Trump's key legal advisors, threatened prison time for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued Trump for fraud earlier this year.
“Let me just say this to big Tish James: I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term,” Davis said on Benny Johnson’s “Benny Show." “Because, listen here, sweetheart: We’re not messing around this time, and we will put your fat a** in prison for conspiracy against rights, and I promise you that.”
“So, think long and hard before you want to violate President Trump‘s constitutional rights or any other American‘s constitutional rights,” he continued. “It’s not gonna happen again.”
In 2022, James charged the Trump Organization with presenting misleading lenders and tax officials with vastly disparate property values. She won the case in February 2024, and the judge fined Trump $355 million and him from operating any business in New York for three years. Her actions enraged Trump, who called her "racist," "grossly incompetent" and a "total disaster." The ruling is now being appealed.
After Trump's 2024 election victory, James declared in a press conference that she would "do everything in my power to ensure our state and nation do not go backwards. ... We will work each and every day to defend Americans, no matter what this new administration throws at us. We are ready to fight back again.”
James is not the only opponent of Trump to be targeted by Davis' inflammatory and violent rhetoric. Recently, he suggested proposals to throw journalists in gulags and drag the the "dead political bodies" of Trump's perceived enemies "through the streets, burn them and throw them off the wall (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)” In 2023, he said with unbridled glee on the "Benny Show" that mass deportations and "putting kids in cages" would be "glorious." His loyalty to Trump has been rewarded with a promise by president-elect to put him in an office of "high capacity" in his incoming administration.
But in an X post written Friday, Davis said he was not interested. "I am not going into his administration and am not under consideration for Attorney General," he claimed, while reiterating his strong support for Trump.
