Former President Donald Trump should be “detained” over his recent remarks he made about former GOP Representative Liz Cheney, attorney and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said on Friday.
At an event in Glendale, Arizona, on October 31, Trump was asked by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson about his thoughts on Cheney, a vocal Trump critic, to which the GOP presidential nominee responded: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
He also suggested that if it were up to Cheney, the United States would be involved in conflicts across “50 different countries.”
Trump then pointed the conversation toward Washington, D.C., politicians in general, adding: “You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘oh gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.'”
Cheney of Wyoming has been campaigning alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, this election cycle in a push to win over GOP voters for the Democratic ticket.
Cheney, who has endorsed Harris, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Trump’s comments, “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala.”
Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent Trump critic, spoke in a YouTube video on Friday about Trump’s comments and the legal implications it could have for the former president as he laid out two ways someone should be “detained.”
“There should be motions filed by the prosecutors in all of these cases seeking to have Donald Trump revoked on release and detained pending trial or sentencing because the evidence will warrant it and because that’s the way the law was intended to be applied to somebody in Donald Trump’s circumstances,” he said.
Kirschner added: “The law also provides that when you are a defendant in a felony case, if there is clear and convincing evidence that you, your conduct, your statements, pose a danger to the community or even one person in the community, you should be detained pending trial. That’s separate and apart of whether you committed a violation of state or federal law. So, both of those vehicles can be used…to detain them pending trial or pending sentencing and that is precisely what should happen in this case given Donald Trump’s threats to Liz Cheney.”
Kirschner’s remarks came after Trump is a criminal defendant in other state and federal cases. The former president faces federal charges in Washington, D.C., for alleged election interference related to the 2020 election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in that case. He was also found guilty earlier this year on 34 counts following his criminal hush money trial in New York. He is expected to be sentenced on November 26, maintains his innocence in the case and may appeal.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
Former President Donald Trump is seen in Milwaukee on November 1. Trump should be “detained” over his recent remarks he made about former GOP Representative Liz Cheney, attorney and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said on Friday.
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Trump has since said in a Truth Social post on Friday afternoon that he was simply saying that Cheney “wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself.”
“All I’m saying about Liz Cheney is that she is a War Hawk, and a dumb one at that, but she wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself,” the former president wrote. “It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!'”
Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told Newsweek in an emailed statement that “Trump is 100 percent correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves. This is the continuation of the latest fake media outrage days before the election in a blatant attempt to interfere on behalf of Kamala Harris.”
Meanwhile, Kirschner is not the first to raise legal concerns regarding Trump’s remarks.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Friday said her office is investigating whether Trump’s remarks broke the law.
“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Mayes said to NBC affiliate 12News. “I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state.”
Richie Taylor, the communications director for Mayes’ office, told Newsweek via email late Friday afternoon that Mayes’ office “is looking into whether Donald Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney violated Arizona law. The office has no additional comments to make at this time.”
On Friday, Anthony Scaramucci called for Trump to be arrested for violating the “conditions of his bail agreement.”
Scaramucci, Trump’s 11-day-long press secretary, posted to X and wrote: “Trump should be taken into custody. He is a convicted felon and just violated the conditions of his bail agreement by threatening someone’s life. He needs to be sent away.”
While it is unclear which bail condition Scaramucci is referring to in this post, Trump is living under bail restrictions set by the state of Georgia due to the investigation into his alleged criminal attempts to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the Peach State. Trump also denies any wrongdoing in the case.
