Donald Trump threatens prison sentences for his opponents in his escalating election campaign rhetoric

MOSINEE, Wisconsin –

Just days before his first and probably only duel against US Vice President Kamala Harris, former US President Donald Trump posted a warning on his social media page in which he threatened to jail anyone in this election who was “involved in unscrupulous behavior.” According to him, the election would be subject to intensive scrutiny.

“IF I WIN, the people who CHEATED will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, including lengthy prison sentences, so that this judicial corruption is not repeated,” Trump wrote late Saturday, sowing fresh doubts about the integrity of the election, even though fraud is incredibly rare.

“Please note,” he continued, “that these legal consequences extend to lawyers, political activists, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials. Those who behave unscrupulously will be tracked down, caught and prosecuted on a scale that has unfortunately never been seen before in our country.”

Trump's message is his latest threat to use the office of the president to exact retribution should he win a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud he continues to claim marred the 2020 election; in fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have declared he lost fairly.

Just a few days ago, Trump himself admitted in a podcast interview that he had indeed “narrowly lost.”

While Trump's campaign aides and allies urged him to keep his focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues such as inflation and border security, in recent days Trump has strayed far from his course.

On Friday, he gave a stunning statement to the cameras, citing a series of past allegations of sexual misconduct and describing some of them in great detail, even as he denied the allegations made by his accusers. He had earlier appeared voluntarily in court to attend a hearing to appeal a verdict that found him guilty of sexual assault, turning the spotlight on his legal troubles in the closing stages of the campaign.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump had raised familiar complaints on everything from his indictments to Russian interference in the 2016 election as part of his campaign in one of the most Republican constituencies in the contested state of Wisconsin.

“The Harris-Biden Department of Justice is trying to put me in jail – they want to see me in jail – for the crime of exposing their corruption,” Trump claimed at an outdoor rally at Central Wisconsin Airport, where he spoke from behind a wall of bulletproof glass due to new security protocols following his assassination attempt in July.

There is no evidence that US President Joe Biden or Harris influenced the Justice Department or prosecutors' decision to bring charges against the former president.

Trump has eschewed traditional debate preparation, preferring to hold rallies and events, while Harris has been living in seclusion in a historic downtown Pittsburgh hotel since Thursday, working with her staff.

Harris has so far agreed to a single debate, moderated by ABC.

At the rally, Trump outlined his plans to “drain the swamp” – a reference to his successful 2016 campaign message when he ran as an outsider who challenged the status quo. Although Trump spent four years in the Oval Office, he again vowed that if he won again he would “throw out the corrupt political class” and “remove excess from our government for the first time in 60 years.”

As part of that effort, he reiterated his plan, announced on Thursday, to create a new “Government Efficiency Commission” headed by Elon Musk. Its task will be to conduct “a comprehensive financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” to eliminate waste.

After again denigrating the congressional committee investigating his supporters' attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss, Trump told the crowd of thousands that he would “swiftly review the cases of every single political prisoner wrongfully tormented by the Harris regime” and sign their pardons on his first day back in office.

Trump has repeatedly defended people who have been imprisoned for crimes such as violent attacks on police officers.

And he said he would “completely clean up” what he called “Kamala's corrupt Ministry of Injustice.”

“Instead of going after Republicans, they will focus on dismantling bloodthirsty cartels, transnational gangs and radical Islamic terrorists,” he said.

Harris' campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement warning that if re-elected, Trump “will use his unchecked power to prosecute his enemies and pardon the insurrectionists who violently attacked our Capitol on January 6.”

Both Harris and Trump have been frequent voters in Wisconsin this year, a state where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than one percentage point. Several polls of Wisconsin voters conducted after Biden's withdrawal showed a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump.

Democrats view Wisconsin as one of the must-win “blue wall” states. Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes. Trump won the state in 2016 by a slightly larger margin of nearly 23,000 votes.

While Trump was campaigning, Harris briefly interrupted her debate preparations and visited Penzey's Spices in Pittsburgh's Strip District, where she purchased several spice blends. A customer saw the Democratic candidate and began to openly cry as Harris hugged her and said, “We're going to get through this. We're all in this together.”

Harris said she was honored to be endorsed by two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming.

“People are exhausted by the division and the attempts to divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate will be that the country wants to be united.

“It's time to move beyond the divisions,” she said. “It's time to bring our country together and forge a new path forward.”

Trump held his rally in the central Wisconsin town of Mosinee, population about 4,500, in Wisconsin's mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a purple state.

In his speech, he railed against Harris in dark and threatening terms, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris” gets four more years, you would be living in a full-blown banana republic where “anarchy” and “tyranny” would reign.

Trump also railed against the administration's border policy. He called the Democrats' actions “suicidal” and accused them of “importing murderers, child molesters and serial rapists from around the world.”

Many studies have found that immigrants, including those living in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than natives. Violent crime rates in the United States fell again last year, continuing a downward trend after a spike during the pandemic.

He dismissed warnings from U.S. government officials about ongoing Russian attempts to spread misinformation ahead of the November election, including an indictment last week alleging that a media outlet linked to six conservative influencers is secretly funded by employees of Russian state media.

“The Justice Department said Russia might interfere in our election again,” Trump told the crowd. “And you know, this time the whole world laughed about it.”

Among those present was Dale Osuldsen, who celebrated his 68th birthday at his first Trump rally on Saturday. He hopes that a second Trump administration will address “cancel culture” and return the country to its “founding past.”

“Previous administrations have repeatedly said they wanted to fundamentally change America,” Osulden said. “Fundamentally changing America is a bad thing.”

Many of her supporters drove hours from across Wisconsin to hear Trump's speech, and some came from even further afield.

Sean Moon, a Tennessee musician who releases MAGA rap music under the stage name “King Bullethead,” blared his songs from a truck in the event parking lot. As a musician, he said Trump rallies are similar to the experience of a loud concert.

“Trump is a rock star,” Moon said. “He's incredible. People see that he represents them and that the deep state is trying to kill him and take him out. But he stands firm and he represents the everyday person.”

Democrats are banking on high turnout in the state's two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, to counter Republican strength in rural areas like Mosinee and the Milwaukee suburbs. Trump needs to win votes in places like Mosinee to have any chance of weakening the Democrats' lead in urban areas.

The Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee in July and Trump has already visited the state four times, most recently last week in the city of La Crosse in western Wisconsin.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had met last month at the same Milwaukee arena where the Republicans held their convention for a rally that coincided with the Democratic convention in Chicago, just 90 miles away. Walz returned to Milwaukee on Monday, where he spoke at a Labor Day rally organized by unions.

Bauer reported from Madison and Colvin from New York. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.