Trump’s attacks on justice system are causing real damage, experts say

Donald Trump’s verbal assaults on judges, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the broader US justice system, are undermining the rule of law and American democracy while fueling threats and potential violence against individuals involved with the legal cases against him and egging on his extremist allies, former federal prosecutors and judges say.

In his campaign to win the presidency again, and in the midst of various criminal and civil trials, Trump has launched multiple attacks on the American legal system on his Truth Social platform to counter the 88 federal and state criminal charges he faces.

Related: Trump trades New York worries for hit of adulation from his Maga faithful

Trump, the all but certain Republican presidential nominee for 2024, has accelerated glorifying the insurgents who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He has called them “patriots” and “hostages”, while promising that if he wins, he will free those convicted of crimes as one of his “first acts” in office.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the electoral system. He has refused to say he will accept the results of the 2024 elections, a ploy similar to what he did in 2020 before falsely claiming the election was rigged – a claim he still maintains.

“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

Darkly, Trump has also warned that if he loses the election there will be “bedlam” and a “bloodbath for the country”. These words referred, in part, to the fallout Trump predicted for the auto industry, but have distinct echoes of his false charges that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 due to fraud.

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on 13 April, right before his first criminal trial in New York began, Trump repeated his bogus claims about his 2020 defeat: “The election was rigged. Pure and simple, 2020 was rigged. We could never let it happen again.”

At the same rally he blasted Juan Merchan, the very judge who oversees his trial in Manhattan. In that case, Trump faces 34 counts for altering company records in 2016 to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments that his fixer Michael Cohen made to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who alleged an affair with him.

“I have a crooked judge,” Trump raged at Merchan, adding that he was “fully gagged before a highly conflicted and corrupt judge, who suffers from TDS … Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

Trump’s multiple attacks on witnesses and jurors, who he had been told were off limits and could spur a contempt citation, have prompted Merchan twice to fine Trump a total of $10,000 for violating a gag order against such attacks.

“The court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders,” the judge has said, warning that Trump could face jail time if he made similar attacks.

Trump insists without evidence that the more than seven dozen federal and state criminal charges he faces in four jurisdictions are “election interference”, and says he has done nothing illegal.

Former prosecutors and judges say Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is catnip to his Maga allies and could spur violence in 2024.

“At its core, the promise of pardons by Trump signals to anyone prone to insurrectionist behavior that they can expect a get out of jail card free,” said former federal judge John Jones, who is now president of Dickinson College.

“My fear is that we will have civil unrest that will impede the election. My concern is that you can have vigilante groups under the guise of ‘stop the steal’, patrolling polling places and intimidating voters.”

Jones stressed that “every one of the Jan 6 defendants has had appropriate due process”.

“They have either been convicted or pled guilty to substantial federal crimes,” he said. “Promising them pardons in the face of that is against every principle in our system of justice.”

Regarding Trump’s ongoing claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that the country will see a “bloodbath” if he loses again, Jones said: “The word ‘bloodbath’ is not ambiguous. The last time Trump fomented this kind of post-election destructiveness, people lost their lives.”

Ex-federal prosecutors raise similar concerns.

“To the extent President Trump is dangling pardons of the J6 defendants he is, in effect, trying to eliminate the deterrent effect of criminal prosecutions with the anticipated result of making violence on his own behalf more likely,” former prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.

“From a legal perspective, deterrence is critical. The threats of violence in 2024 can only be mitigated by strong, consistent prosecution for violent acts in 2020.”

Concerns about the potentially dangerous fallout from Trump’s attacks on the electoral and legal systems are underscored by a Brennan Center study in late April, which showed 38% of over 925 local election officials surveyed had experienced “threats, harassment or abuse”.

The Brennan survey, conducted in February and March, also found that 54% of those surveyed were worried about the safety of fellow workers, and 62% were concerned about political leaders trying to interfere with how they do their jobs.

On a related track, the DC judge Tanya Chutkan, who has handled a number of cases involving January 6 insurrectionists, has warned starkly about the dangers of more violence this year. Chutkan, who is slated to oversee Trump’s trial on charges by the special counsel Jack Smith that he sought to subvert the 2020 election, echoed Rosenzweig’s warning that more violence is less likely to happen if those convicted or who have pleaded guilty for the January 6 attack receive appropriate sentences.

Last month, Chutkan issued a stiff sentence of 66 months for one insurgent who attacked the Capitol and has called the Jan 6 violent Capitol attack by Trump allies that led to injuries of 140 police officers “as serious a crisis as this nation has ever faced”.

Notably, Chutkan has stressed that “extremism is alive and well in this country. Threats of violence continue unabated.”

Ex-prosecutors also say that Trump’s attacks on the legal system are alarming.

“Trump’s persistent denigration of the legal system is surely as divisive as everything else he does because he’s lying,” said the former justice department official Ty Cobb, who worked as a White House counsel for part of the Trump administration. “Trump’s lies in this area seem to have been embraced by his followers as truth.”

Cobb stressed that “Trump has not been unfairly targeted by the justice department or the Biden administration, but charged only with serious crimes he has committed. The two state cases in which Trump stands criminally indicted have nothing to do with the Biden administration.”