Donald Trump turned his supporters’ chants of “lock her up!” into a campaign theme Wednesday, vowing that as president he would order a special prosecutor to investigate his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and everyone connected to her email scandal.
“This is crime at the highest level. She shouldn’t be allowed to run for president. You know that,” the Republican presidential nominee said to a roaring crowd at a rally in Ocala, Florida.
“Other people’s lives have been ruined, destroyed for doing a tiny fraction of what she did,” said Mr. Trump, referring to other cases where people who broke rules for handling classified information went to jail or paid huge fines.
At a presidential debate Sunday, Mr. Trump first proposed a special prosecutor to investigate Mrs. Clinton, who used a secret email setup for official business as secretary of state and thereby mishandled at least 113 classified documents — but managed to dodge federal charges.
Mr. Trump in Florida fully incorporated the threat into his stump speech.
He said the proposed investigation would extend to the Justice Department and FBI, which investigated Mrs. Clinton’s secret email setup as secretary of state but decided not to prosecute her, despite finding she was “extremely careless” in handling classified material.
“We have to investigate the investigation. We’ve never had a case like this,” Mr. Trump said.
The threats of prosecution were part of an escalation of attacks by Mr. Trump, who has slid with 26 days until the election.
“This is the most heinous, the most serious thing that I have ever seen with justice in the history of the United States. We have a person that has committed crimes that is now running for the presidency,” Mr. Trump said with disbelief.
He noted the secret meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch days before she announced the decision not to prosecute and Mrs. Clinton’s promise to re-appoint her attorney general.
Mr. Trump said the law firm representing Mrs. Clinton also should be prosecuted for its role in permanently deleting about 33,000 emails that they deemed personal, despite a subpoena from Congress for Mrs. Clinton’s email.
“It is one of the great miscarriages of justice,” Mr. Trump said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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