Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin has revealed that Donald Trump repeatedly mused out loud about executing people at various rallies while she worked for him during his presidency.
Griffin’s claim, which she made in a podcast recording with Mediaite released Friday, is likely to heighten concerns that a Trump return to the Oval Office could be marked primarily by political retaliation.
The former Trump administration communications director told the spokesperson that she was at a meeting where he “flatly said that a staffer who leaked … should be executed,” referring to an anonymously sourced report that the former president had entered a secure bunker. the White House at the height of racial justice protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“There were others where we talked about executing people,” Griffin said.
In response to Griffin’s comments, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek: “As President Trump has said, the best revenge is the success and prosperity of all Americans.”
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Under the Constitution, a president has no direct power to enforce the death penalty. But the president does have the power to appoint attorneys general to oversee major decisions regarding the federal death penalty.
Rumors about Trump’s interest in summary executions have been circulating for years. As he prepared to run for a second presidency in November, Trump reportedly asked three people, “What do you think about firing squads?” And he has repeatedly supported expanding the use of the federal death penalty.
According to Rolling Stone, Trump has also considered bringing back hangings and the guillotine — while televising their use — because it would “help instill the fear of God in violent criminals.”
A Trump spokesperson told Rolling Stone at the time that “either these people are making up lies out of thin air” or the outlet is “allowing itself to be deceived by these idiots.”
But the Trump 2024 campaign has also said that if the former president returns to office, he would “ask for anyone who sells drugs, who is caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their pain.”
During the final three months of Trump’s first term, the US executed thirteen federal prisoners by lethal injection – a significant acceleration in the federal government’s use of the death penalty.
Previously, only three people had been executed since 1963. But under the Trump administration, the federal government allowed any method of execution that was legal in the state where the death penalty was carried out.
The Terre Haute federal prison in Indiana, where Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001, has used hanging, electrocution and lethal injection.
Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr has said that if Trump had won a second term in 2020, there was “an expectation” that the use of the federal death penalty would continue at an accelerated pace.
Griffin’s claim that Trump called for the execution of a White House official is loosely confirmed by Barr during an interview he gave to CNN in April, in which he recalled Trump being “very angry” about the White House bunker leak.
Barr said he could not remember whether Trump had specifically called for the execution of anyone and doubted it would ever have been carried out. But he also said he “would not dispute” that Trump had called for the execution of anyone over the bunker leak.
Griffin left the White House in December 2020, weeks after Trump lost the election to Joe Biden, but refused to accept the legitimacy of the outcome. She is now a commentator for CNN and co-host of the NBC talk show The View.
