'If You Go After Me, I'm Coming After You': Threats Against Prosecutors, Witnesses and Gen. Milley (2023)

What happened

On August 3, 2023, Trump was arraigned in Washington on the federal indictment charging him with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. The magistrate judge reminded him "that it is a crime to try to influence a juror, or to threaten or attempt to bribe a witness or any other person who may have information about your case, or to retaliate against anyone for providing information about your case to the prosecution" (CNN).

The next day Trump posted on Truth Social: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" The special counsel's office put a screenshot of the post, "posted just hours ago," into its filing seeking a protective order over discovery. Prosecutors argued that publishing details from discovery "could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses" (CNN). Within days, Judge Tanya Chutkan was seen accompanied by U.S. Marshals inside the courthouse. The Marshals Service declined to comment on specific measures (NBC News).

On September 22, 2023, shortly before Gen. Mark Milley was due to step down as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the end of the month (CBS News), Trump wrote about Milley's reported calls to Chinese counterparts after the 2020 election: "This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act" (CNBC; CBS News). Rep. Paul Gosar wrote separately that "in a better society" Milley "would be hung" (CNBC). Milley said he would "take appropriate measures to ensure my safety and the safety of my family" (CBS News).

On September 29, the special counsel's office cited the Milley post, among others, in asking Judge Chutkan for a narrow gag order. It argued that Trump was waging "a sustained campaign of prejudicial public statements regarding witnesses, the Court, the District, and prosecutors" (NBC News). Chutkan imposed a gag order. On December 8, 2023, a D.C. Circuit panel (Judges Millett, Pillard and Garcia) largely upheld it, while exempting comments about Jack Smith and narrowing the restriction on witnesses. The court held: "Mr. Trump's documented pattern of speech and its demonstrated real-time, real-world consequences pose a significant and imminent threat to the functioning of the criminal trial process in this case." According to CNN, it noted the "If you go after me" post as a broadly threatening message, and wrote that Trump's "messaging [was] daggered at likely witnesses and their testimony" and that some witnesses had "had their lives turned upside down after coming within Mr. Trump's verbal sights" (CNN).

After Trump returned to office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revoked Milley's security detail, which had been provided because of Iranian threats, suspended his security clearance and ordered an inspector-general review of whether he should be reduced in rank (NPR, January 29, 2025).

Legal analysis

Rome Statute. No international crime is in play. The crime type is none.

Domestic law (adjudicated in part). Trump was not charged over these posts. The D.C. Circuit did find, as a matter of fact, that his pattern of public statements had real-world consequences and posed a significant and imminent threat to the fair conduct of the trial. That finding justified restricting the speech of a presidential candidate, a step courts take rarely. Witness intimidation and retaliation are federal crimes (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512–1513), as the magistrate judge warned at the arraignment, but no court applied those statutes to these posts.

The Milley post. Suggesting that the country's senior serving officer deserved execution for conduct carried out in his official role is not a crime in itself. Coming from the leading candidate for president, it signalled what an officer could face for acting against the President's wishes. Milley treated it as a threat to his safety. After Trump took office, the protection Milley had because of foreign threats was withdrawn.

Strongest defence argument. Trump argued that the posts were political speech by a candidate attacking a prosecution he called politically motivated. On this view the Milley post was a historical observation about treason, not a call to violence. The D.C. Circuit accepted part of this: Trump stayed free to attack Jack Smith, the Justice Department and President Biden, and to call the case politically motivated. It rejected the rest, finding that his statements about witnesses and court personnel created a real and imminent risk to the trial.

Why this grade

Significant. Rhetoric is not an act, and this entry records statements, not uses of state power: Trump held no office in 2023. A federal appeals court nonetheless found that his pattern of speech had demonstrated real-world consequences, which is more than the archive's other rhetoric entries show. The grade stays at significant because the specific harm from these posts, as distinct from the broader pattern, is not quantified in the sources fetched. The second-term retaliation against Milley and the prosecutions of other critics are recorded as conduct in office in the related entries. No international crime is in play, so the entry carries no warCrimeClassification.