Trump’s Chilling Retaliation Campaign Exposed: 470 Targets and Counting
Nov 26 (Reuters) – In his second term, Donald Trump has turned a campaign promise to punish his political opponents into a guiding principle of his governance.
What began as a provocative rallying cry in March 2023 – “I am your retribution” – has hardened into a broad campaign of retaliation against perceived enemies, reshaping federal policy, staffing and law enforcement.
A Reuters tally reveals the magnitude: At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted in retaliation since Trump took office, an average of more than one a day.
Some were singled out for punishment; others were swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments, as well as federal employees laid off as part of personnel reductions.
Reuters found that Trump’s revenge campaign fuses personal vendettas with a drive for cultural and political dominance.
His administration has wielded executive power to punish perceived enemies: firing prosecutors who investigated his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, ordering punishments on media organizations deemed hostile, penalizing law firms linked to his opponents and sidelining public officials who question his policies.
Many of those actions face legal challenges.
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At the same time, Trump and his appointees have used the government to impose ideologies: overthrowing military leaders considered “woke,” cutting funding to cultural institutions considered divisive, and freezing research grants to universities that adopted diversity initiatives.
Reuters reached out to every person and institution Trump or his subordinates publicly singled out for retaliation and reviewed hundreds of official orders, directives and public records. The result: the most complete accounting yet of his revenge campaign.
The analysis revealed two broad groups of people and organizations targeted by retaliation.
Members of the first group (at least 247 people and entities) were singled out by name, either publicly by Trump and his appointees or later in government memos, legal documents or other records. To qualify, acts had to be directed at specific people or entities, with evidence of intent to punish. Reuters journalists interviewed or corresponded with more than 150 of them.
Another 224 people were caught up in broader retaliation efforts, not named individually but caught up in crackdowns against groups of perceived opponents. Nearly 100 of them were prosecutors and FBI agents fired or forced to retire for working on cases involving Trump or his allies, or because they were considered “woke.” This includes 16 FBI agents who took a knee at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. The rest were public officials, most of them suspended for publicly opposing administration policies or resisting directives on health, environmental and science issues.
Retribution took three different forms.
The most common were punitive acts, such as firings, suspensions, investigations, and the revocation of security clearances.
Reuters found at least 462 such cases, including the firing of 128 federal workers and officials who had investigated, challenged or otherwise challenged Trump or his administration.
The second way was threats.
Trump and his administration targeted at least 46 people, companies and other entities with threats of investigations or sanctions, including freezing federal funding for Democratic-led cities like New York and Chicago.
Trump openly talked about firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for resisting interest rate cuts, for example. Last week, he threatened to try six Democratic members of Congress for sedition – a crime he said is “punishable by DEATH” – after lawmakers reminded military personnel that they can refuse “unlawful orders.” This week, the Defense Department threatened to court-martial one of them, US Senator Mark Kelly, a former naval officer.
The third way was coercion. In at least a dozen cases, organizations such as law firms and universities signed agreements with the government to roll back diversity initiatives or other policies after facing threats of punishment from the administration, such as revocations of security clearances and loss of federal funds and contracts.
It is a campaign led from the top: the Trump White House has issued at least 36 orders, decrees and directives, targeting at least 100 individuals and entities with punitive actions, according to Reuters analysis.
Trump openly campaigned on a platform of revenge in his last run for president, vowing to punish enemies of his Make America Great Again movement. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am their retribution,” he said in a March 2023 speech. Weeks later, while campaigning in Texas, he repeated the theme. “I am your justice,” he said.
Today, the White House questions the idea that the administration is seeking revenge. Describes recent investigations and accusations of political adversaries as valid policy course corrections, necessary investigations into wrongdoing, and legitimate political initiatives.
“This entire article is based on the flawed premise that enforcing an electoral mandate is somehow ‘retribution.’ It is not,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. There is no place in government for officials or public officials “who actively seek to undermine the agenda for which the American people elected the president,” he added. Trump is making good on his campaign promises to restore a justice system that was “weaponized” by the Biden administration, Jackson said, and “ensure taxpayer funding does not go to partisan causes.”
Trump’s actions have been applauded by his staunchest supporters. Right-wing commentator and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told Reuters that the use of government power to punish Trump’s enemies “is not at all revenge” but rather an attempt to “hold people accountable” for what he said were unfair investigations into Trump. There are more on the way, he said.
“The people who tried to take away President Trump’s first term, who accused him of being a Russian asset and harmed this republic, and then stole the 2020 election, will be held accountable and will be tried in court,” he said in an interview. “That’s coming. There’s no doubt about it.” There is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.
Trump allies point to actions former President Joe Biden took upon taking office. After Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to overturn his election loss, Biden revoked Trump’s access to classified information, a first for any former president. Biden also won a court battle to remove Senate-confirmed directors of independent agencies serving fixed terms, such as the Federal Housing Finance Authority, and removed dozens of Trump-era appointees from unpaid advisory boards.
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However, the scale and systematic nature of Trump’s effort to punish perceived enemies marks a stark break with long-standing norms in American governance, according to 13 political scientists and legal scholars interviewed by Reuters. Some historians say the closest, though inaccurate, modern parallel is the late President Richard Nixon’s quest for revenge against his political enemies. Since May, for example, dozens of officials from multiple federal agencies have been meeting as part of a task force formed to advance Trump’s retaliation campaign against perceived enemies, Reuters previously reported.
“The main goal is the concentration of power and the destruction of all checks on power,” said Daron Acemoglu, a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who faces an ongoing federal investigation for adopting diversity and equity programs. “Retribution is just one of the tools.”
Dozens of Trump targets have questioned his punishments as illegal. Fired and suspended officials have filed administrative appeals or judicial challenges alleging unjustified dismissal. Some law firms have gone to court alleging that the administration exceeded its legal authority by restricting their ability to work on classified contracts or interact with federal agencies. Most of those challenges remain unresolved.
INVESTIGATING TRUMP’S ENEMIES
The administration has moved aggressively against officials in the government’s legal and national security agencies, institutions central to investigations of Trump’s alleged misconduct during and after his first term.
At least 69 current and former officials were attacked for investigating or raising alarms about Russian interference in the US elections. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded shortly after the 2016 election that Moscow was seeking to tilt the race toward Trump, a finding later confirmed by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in August 2020. Acts of retaliation linked to the Russia investigation include the Sept. 25 indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, a break with Justice Department rules meant to protect prosecutions from political influence.
Comey, who led the FBI investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign, was charged after Trump demanded his prosecution. The Justice Department has presented the case as a crackdown on corruption. Comey and his lawyers said in court papers that the case was “vindictive” and motivated by “personal animus.” Comey, who has pleaded not guilty, declined to comment. A federal judge dismissed the case on Monday, ruling that Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor had been illegally appointed.
At least 58 acts of retaliation have targeted people Trump considered spoilers of his election campaigns, including Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official during his first term. Trump fired him in 2020 for challenging claims that the election was rigged. In April, Trump stripped Krebs of his security clearance and ordered a federal investigation into his tenure. Krebs, who continues to assert that Trump’s defeat was valid, has vowed to fight the investigation. He did not respond for this story.
Reuters documented 112 security clearances revoked from current and former U.S. officials, law firms and state leaders, credentials needed for jobs involving classified information. In August, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she would revoke 37 clearances. ones.
In a response to Reuters published on He added: “President Trump said it best: ‘Our ultimate reward is success.’”
Leon Panetta, CIA director and Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, had his security clearance revoked in January along with others who signed an October 2020 letter suggesting Russia may have been behind reports of emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. At the time, Joe Biden, Hunter’s father, was Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2020 election. An executive order Trump signed in January stated: “The signatories intentionally weaponized the intelligence community’s credibility to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.” Panetta has said he supports signing the letter.
Panetta told Reuters he had already renounced his clearance after leaving the government nearly a decade ago. Trump’s retaliation campaign is damaging CIA morale and ruining the bipartisan trust that allows Washington to function, Panetta said. “What worries me is that our adversaries see what is happening and feel weakness,” he said. “This type of political retaliation leads to a loss of trust, which ultimately leads to failure in government.” The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
The revenge effort also reaches deep into the civil service, punishing employees who speak out against Trump policies and transforming forms of dissent that were tolerated. converted by past administrations into a reason for discipline.
This summer, hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency employees wrote an open letter protesting deep cuts to cleanup and pollution control programs. The consequences were quick. More than 100 signatories who attached their names were placed on paid leave. At least 15 senior officials and probationary employees were told they would be fired. The rest were told they were under investigation for misconduct, resulting in at least 69 suspensions without pay. Many were out of work for weeks.
“They followed all the rules” of conduct for public officials, said Nicole Cantello, a signatory and leader of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents many affected workers. He called the punishments an attempt to “stifle dissent,” stifle free speech and “scare employees.” In a statement, the EPA said it has “a zero-tolerance policy for career officials who use their position and title at the agency to illegally undermine, sabotage, and subvert” administrative policy.
At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about 20 employees were placed on leave and now face misconduct investigations after signing a letter criticizing the agency’s decision to scrap bipartisan reforms adopted years ago to speed disaster relief.
Cameron Hamilton, a Republican who briefly served as FEMA’s acting chief, was fired in May, a day after telling Congress that he did not believe the agency should be closed, contradicting the administration.
Hamilton told Reuters he still supports Trump. But he said too many top officials are firing people in the name of retaliation, trying to impress the White House. “They want to find ways to really launch themselves into prominence and be movers and shakers, kick ass and take names,” Hamilton said. “They’re trying to show the president ‘look what I’m doing for you.’”
In a statement to Reuters, the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, said it is building a “new FEMA” to fix “inefficiencies and outdated processes.” Employees who “resist change” “are not a good fit,” the statement said.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sees her firing in October, three weeks after filing a whistleblowing complaint alleging politicization of vaccine research and policy, as a warning sign. He told Reuters that the administration’s purge of dissident health officials is generating “anticipatory obedience,” a reflex of obeying before being asked. “People know that if they reject… this is what happens,” he said. The effect, he says, is an ecosystem of fear: those who remain in government censor themselves; those who speak out are branded “radioactive, too hot to handle.”
The Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees NIAID, did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal agency leaders have fired a wide range of officials they deemed out of step with Trump’s MAGA agenda, including employees involved in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and those working on transgender issues.
David Maltinsky, an employee at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, says he was fired by Director Kash Patel for displaying a Pride flag at work — one of at least 50 bureau employees fired under Patel.
Maltinsky sued the FBI and the Department of Justice, alleging violations of his constitutional rights and requesting his reinstatement. The Justice Department has yet to file a formal response.
In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel named 60 people he said were members of an “Executive Branch deep state” that opposed Trump, including former Democratic and Republican government officials who served in Trump’s first administration but ultimately broke with him. He called for dismissals and said anyone who abused their authority should face prosecution. At his 2025 confirmation hearing before Congress, Patel denied it was an “enemies list.”
Reuters found that at least 17 of the 60 people on Patel’s list have faced some form of retaliation, including firings and withdrawal of security clearances. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Against perceived enemies in the private sector, the administration has used financial sanctions as leverage. At least two dozen law firms faced inquiries, investigations or restrictions on federal contracting, often for employing or representing people linked to past cases against Trump. Eight reached agreements to avoid further actions.
Nine media organizations have faced federal investigations, lawsuits, threats to have their broadcast licenses revoked and limitations on access to White House events. Trump has also suggested revoking the broadcast licenses of networks whose coverage he doesn’t like.
The targets include universities, long considered by the president and his allies to be strongholds of left-wing radicals.
Officials froze more than $4 billion in federal grants and research funds for at least nine schools, demanding policy changes such as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning transgender athletes from women’s sports and cracking down on alleged anti-Semitism amid pro-Palestinian protests. Five universities have signed agreements to restore funding. Harvard University successfully sued to block the freezing of $2.2 billion in federal aid to the school, which Trump accused of “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired dogmas.” Harvard declined to comment.
The administration has described funding freezes and other efforts to force policy changes at colleges and universities as a necessary push to reverse years of leftward bias in American education. “If Reuters considers restoring merit in admissions, reclaiming women’s titles that were misappropriated by male athletes, enforcing civil rights laws, and preventing taxpayer dollars from funding DEI’s radical ‘give back’ programs, then we are on very different planes of reality,” said Julie Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education.
A HISTORICAL PARALLEL: NIXON’S ENEMIES
Of course, it’s impossible to predict how far Trump’s revenge campaign will go or whether it will be hurt by a recent drop in popular support.
Trump has been hit by public frustration over the high cost of living and the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, in which aides from his re-election campaign broke into Democratic Party headquarters and the president himself later led a cover-up. While in office, he maintained a list of more than 500 enemies. But while Trump has carried out his retaliation campaign openly, historians note, Nixon’s enemies list was intended as a covert tool.
John Dean, Nixon’s top White House lawyer, wrote a confidential memo in 1971 about “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The planned methods included tax audits, wiretapping, cancellation of contracts and criminal actions. However, the enforcement failed: IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander refused to conduct mass audits, and most targets escaped serious punishment.
To be sure, other recent presidents have been accused of trying to punish their opponents, albeit on a smaller scale. The Obama administration carried out “aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a 2013 report. Two IRS employees alleged they faced retaliation during the Biden administration for raising concerns about the handling of the Hunter Biden tax compliance investigation.
Nixon’s plot remained secret until the Watergate hearings exposed him, turning his list of enemies into a symbol of presidential abuse. The secrecy reflected a political culture in which retaliation was whispered, not broadcast, and where institutional controls mitigated many of Nixon’s ambitions.
Trump’s approach reverses that pattern, historians say. He has openly named his perceived enemies, called for public prosecutions, and cast revenge as a campaign vote. Some say that the current “enemies list” policy is in this sense more far-reaching than Nixon’s, and possibly indicates a shift toward a normalization of retribution in American political life.
Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University who has written a book on power grabs by American presidents, said Nixon was eventually controlled and forced to resign by Congress, including by members of his own Republican Party. “That’s just not happening right now,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Nate Raymond and Sarah N. Lynch)