Sen. Elissa Slotkin wants Republicans to know that leaving the Trump administration may not end their legal exposure. Speaking to students at the University of Chicago last week, the Michigan Democrat described a strategy of pursuing prosecutions against officials who served under President Donald Trump, framing the effort in part as a warning to the next generation of conservative staffers.
According to The Federalist’s account of the interview, Slotkin said the people around Trump “have no immunity the way the president does,” adding, “So you go after the people who do his bidding.”
She went on to describe the effect she hopes such cases would have on young people considering careers in a Republican administration. “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.’ I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,'” Slotkin said. “I want that deterrence message.”
A follow-up post, and a September speech
Days after the campus event, Slotkin repeated the argument on X, writing that the rule of law “should apply to everyone equally” and that anyone who aided in a “corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family” or violated the law to carry out presidential guidance “should be held accountable.”
She noted in the same post that while the Supreme Court has granted the president immunity, it “has not done the same for those who do illegal things at his behest.”
The remarks build on a September speech in which Slotkin said the goal was to assemble “a list of ‘signature cases’ that go after some of the most obvious and harmful abuses of taxpayer dollars.” The Federalist reported that the list includes former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Slotkin has used the word “retribution” to describe these efforts, the outlet noted.
Other Democrats making similar calls
Slotkin is not alone in pledging to pursue Republicans legally. The Federalist reported that Angie Nixon, a Democratic Senate candidate, said last week that her Republican opponent — former Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody — should be “locked up and punished in jail.”
Pressed on CBS’s Face the Nation over whether the comment amounted to a desire to weaponize the justice system, Nixon rejected the framing, saying her aim was “to actually hold corrupt politicians accountable for what they’re doing.”
The outlet also pointed to comments from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last year, who said the statute of limitations for crimes being committed now is five years and “will extend well beyond the end of the Trump administration.”
The legal fights of the past several years
The article places Slotkin’s comments in the context of a series of prosecutions involving Trump and his associates. It recounts New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud case against Trump, which a court ultimately found unconstitutional, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case over hush-money payments, in which a jury convicted Trump on 34 felony counts in May 2024. Sentencing in that case was postponed after Trump’s election victory.
At the federal level, The Federalist notes that Special Counsel Jack Smith brought two indictments against Trump — one over classified documents, dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional, and one over efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that presidents have broad immunity for official acts and sent questions back to the lower court; Smith dropped the case after Trump won in 2024.
The outlet also cited the prosecutions of former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, both of whom served prison time for defying subpoenas from the House January 6 committee, and of Trump aide Walt Nauta, whose charges in the classified documents case were later dropped.
Slotkin’s office has not responded publicly to criticism of her remarks. The Federalist’s editorial argued that her description of prosecutorial priorities amounts to an explicit plan for “retribution” against Republicans and urged readers to take the warning seriously.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/10/19/the-democrat-party-platform-is-throwing-conservatives-in-prison-and-slotkin-just-said-it-out-loud/