Donald Trump has no intention of trying to jail Hillary Clinton, a senior aide said on Tuesday, reversing a pledge that frequently roused supporters to chant “Lock her up!” and led critics to compare him to leaders of authoritarian regimes.
The president-elect “doesn’t wish to pursue” criminal investigations into the former secretary of state over her use of a private email server or conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation, Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC’s Morning Joe programme.
“I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal then perhaps that’s a good thing,” Conway added.
New York Times journalists reported on Twitter that Trump had echoed this sentiment during an interview at their newspaper on Tuesday:
Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum)Trump is pressed if he has definitively ruled out prosecuting Hillary Clinton. “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about."
November 22, 2016
Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum)“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways."
November 22, 2016
Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT)That last tweet was Trump making clear he doesn't favor prosecution. Added people could argue the Clinton Foundation has done "good work."
November 22, 2016
Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT)"I think it would be very very divisive for the country," Trump says about prosecuting the Clintons.
November 22, 2016
Clinton suffered a low rating for trustworthiness in opinion polls during the bitterly fought election campaign. Trump nicknamed his Democratic rival “Crooked Hillary”, claimed that foreign entities gave money to the Clinton Foundation in return for favors from the state department when Clinton was secretary of state, and condemned the FBI for refusing to recommend prosecuting her for mishandling classified information.
The Republican candidate invariably encouraged his supporters’ raucous cries of “Lock her up!” at rallies, where T-shirts and badges showed Clinton’s face behind bars, often with profane captions. He told her at a debate that if he was president she would “be in jail” and vowed to appoint a special prosecutor.
That remark provoked an outcry from critics who accused Trump of behaving like a dictator. Legal experts argued that, while he could have suggested to the Department of Justice that it bring a case, Trump would have little constitutional power to make it happen.
The gap between the brash billionaire’s taunts on the campaign trail and his approach now, Conway suggested, is part of a conscious shift away from the tone of his past rhetoric. “I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them,” she said.
The FBI investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state during Barack Obama’s first term, concluding earlier this year that her actions were “extremely careless” but not corrupt.
Republicans in Congress have been hammering Clinton for years over issues such as the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican chairman of the House oversight and government reform committee, has said he will continue investigating Clinton’s use of a private server.
But Conway indicated that Trump would not favour such a move. “When the president-elect, who’s also the head of your party now, tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message – tone and content – to the members,” she added.
Among the most vocal Clinton critics was Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor, who said before the election that he could see her in an “orange” or “striped” jumpsuit. But on Tuesday, at Trump Tower, he too appeared to backtrack somewhat.
“Look, there’s a tradition in American politics that after you win an election, you sort of put things behind you,” he told reporters. “And if that’s the decision he reached, that’s perfectly consistent with sort of a historical pattern of things come up, you say a lot of things, even some bad things might happen, and then you can sort of put it behind you in order to unite the nation.
“So if he made that decision, I would be supportive of it. I’d also be supportive of continuing the investigation. I think the president-elect had a tough choice there, you could go either way. If he made the choice to unite the nation, I think, all those people who didn’t vote against him, maybe, could take another look at him.”
Trump appeared to soften his threats against Clinton almost from the moment he pulled off he stunning election win. In New York he gave a victory speech that praised the former first lady, saying “we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country”.
Then in a TV interview on CBS, he was equivocal on the issue. “I’m going to think about it,” he said. “I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on health care, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. We want to have a great immigration bill. And I want to focus on all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.”
Trump said in that interview that Clinton “did some bad things,” but ultimately the Clintons are “good people” and “I don’t want to hurt them”.
Clinton has frequently acknowledged her use of a private email server was a mistake and denied links between foundation donors and her work as secretary of state.