Michael Cohen lists people Donald Trump might target with SEAL Team Six

Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen on Saturday listed people the former president might target with SEAL Team Six and issued a warning against Trump's reelection.

The presidential election is close, as President Trump and President Joe Biden are likely to face a 2020 rematch in November. One of the key topics in the 2024 election is President Trump's various ongoing legal issues. The former president was convicted last month on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid by Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she had a sexual relationship with President Trump in 2006, which President Trump denies. President Trump has maintained his innocence and claims the case is politically motivated. His legal team intends to appeal the verdict.

In an interview on MSNBC on Saturday Versi Cohen, who was the prosecution's star witness in the case and a vocal critic of Trump, spoke with host Ali Velshi about what he thinks will happen to him and others if Trump is re-elected.

“He's already said he plans to use SEAL Team Six to wipe out his political opponents, so I'm definitely at the top of that list. [Velshi] Although not at the top of that list, you are on that list as well as the president of MSNBC. [retired U.S. Army] General Mark Milley [former Vice President] Mike Pence, [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton, the whole Biden family,” Cohen said.

“This is not a joke, and the fact that he is being considered as the candidate of the Republican Party, one of the two major political parties in our country, is deeply offensive. It should be deeply offensive to every person in this country,” he added.

But it's unclear what Trump plans to do if he's re-elected. Trump has continued to criticize the Department of Justice (DOJ) amid his legal troubles, but when asked if he plans to use the DOJ to go after his political opponents, he said in an interview with Fox News: Fox & Friends “I don't know if I can answer that question,” he said in an interview last week.

And when questioned by Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday, the former president denied the idea that he wanted to retaliate against his political opponents, but said he was “fully within his rights to go after them.”

“Number one, they're wrong. This has to stop or we won't have a country. Once this election is over, I will have every right to go after them based on what they've done,” Trump said.

Newsweek A spokesman for President Trump was emailed a request for comment.

SEAL Team Six, or more formally known as the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), is one of the most elite units within the U.S. military and is part of the Joint Special Operations Command.

The SEALs were formed in 1980 following the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw. While the exact makeup and operations of the units are often kept classified, they are made up of small, highly trained teams capable of carrying out a variety of missions. Most famously, SEAL Team 6 was responsible for Operation Neptune Spear, in which they killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, but they have also participated in numerous high-profile missions around the world.

Cohen's comments come after Trump's legal team suggested in January, as Trump is arguing for presidential immunity in the US Supreme Court in the federal election subversion case, that if the president had ordered SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent, their actions would be covered by presidential immunity unless he was impeached and convicted by Congress.

Meanwhile, Miles Taylor, a former senior Trump administration official, warned that if Trump were to return to office he would likely appoint people to his cabinet who would go to great lengths to get his policies through.

In an April interview with MSNBC Morning JoeTaylor said that if Trump were to return to the White House, the former president would likely avoid appointing people who might oppose him, to avoid the mistakes of the previous administration.

“Donald Trump realized quite late in his first term in office that there were too many people who went to bed every night, developed a conscience, and came back with the faintest hint of a conscience, and said no, and resisted,” Taylor said. “He doesn't want those people around him. He wants the Oval Office to be an echo chamber. That's what he wants, that's what he's going to get.”

Taylor was the first former Trump administration official to endorse Joe Biden in the last presidential election and later led a group of more than 100 former officials in opposing a second term for Trump. In the final days of the Trump administration and following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, several senior officials resigned from their jobs and criticized their former bosses.

When asked previously about Taylor's comments, Trump spokesman Stephen Chang said: Newsweek“Miles Taylor lives a lonely life because he is a coward and an untrustworthy liar.”