Trump may target this top Dem in intimidation campaign after ABC settlement
President-elect Donald Trump has been spending a bulk of his presidential transition less focused on putting together a governing agenda and more focused on an aggressive campaign of legal intimidation. Now, one of his supporters has identified his next potential target.
Politico is reporting that former Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich — who endorsed Trump in 2024 after receiving a pardon from him in 2020 — is calling on the president-elect to zero in on current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Blagojevich tweeted that Trump should pursue the Illinois governor using the same tactic he successfully used against ABC News in a separate defamation lawsuit.
“Now that Trump successfully won his defamation case against ABC for calling him a ‘rapist,’ when will he sue Illinois Governor JB Pritzker for repeatedly lying & calling him the same thing?” Blagojevich wrote on X.
READ MORE: 'Open season': Experts slam Trump's 'disgusting' lawsuit against Iowa newspaper and pollster
In a June tweet, Pritzer called Trump "a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and a congenital liar." He added that then-candidate Trump was "a racist, sexist, misogynistic narcissist who wants to use the levers of power to enrich himself and punish anyone who dares speak a word against him." Blagojevich's tweet may be a reference to that statement, or his comments in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump this summer, when he said the fact that Trump narrowly dodged a bullet didn't change the fact that he was "a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist."
The incoming president is fresh off of a legal victory in which ABC News agreed to make a $15 million contribution to Trump's presidential library fund in addition to another $1 million in legal expenses in order to settle with Trump over his defamation claim. The lawsuit was filed in response to ABC host George Stephanopoulos saying Trump was found guilty of "rape" in a 2023 verdict in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll. The actual verdict wasn't for rape, but for "sexual abuse."
In a subsequent filing, Judge Lewis F. Kaplan clarified that "sexual abuse" was essentially the same thing as "rape" as the average person understands it, and that Trump was indeed guilty. He was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million for sexual abuse, and then another $83.3 million for defaming her when falsely asserting that she made the story up for financial benefit.
Trump has also filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and retired pollster Ann Selzer for a poll that falsely predicted Vice President Kamala Harris would win Iowa by three points. Trump argued that the poll was a form of election interference, even though he ended up winning Iowa by a double-digit margin.
READ MORE: Trump calls for 'dishonest' ABC News to lose license following debate fact-check
Click here to read Politico's report in full.
