The president-elect ‘doesn’t wish to pursue’ criminal investigations into Clinton over her use of a private email server, despite vows he made during campaign

Donald Trump has in effect dropped his threat to jail Hillary Clinton, a prospect that frequently roused supporters to chant “lock her up!” and led critics to compare him to leaders of authoritarian regimes.

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The president-elect told the New York Times on Tuesday that it would be “divisive” to pursue criminal investigations into the former secretary of state over her use of a private email server or conflicts of interest involving her foundation. His conciliatory tone provoked a backlash from some conservatives.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said, according to a tweet by Times journalist Mike Grynbaum. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”

Trump was then pressed on whether he had definitively ruled out a prosecution, Grynbaum reported. The president-elect replied: “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.”

As a candidate, Trump 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 slogans. 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 suggest to the Department of Justice that it bring a case, as president Trump would have little constitutional power to make it happen.

In his conversation at the New York Times office, he rejected the idea that his supporters would be upset by his letting Clinton off the hook. “I don’t think they will be disappointed,” he said, according to a tweet by reporter Maggie Haberman. “I think I will explain it that we in many ways will save our country.”

Haberman said Trump made clear he did not favour prosecution when he continued: “My inclination would be for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let’s go forward. This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseum.”

Apparently aware that the election campaign had been extraordinarily polarising, Trump said a prosecution would be “very, very divisive for the country”. Clinton’s lead in the popular vote now exceeds 1.5 million.

The comments were a far cry from the vicious campaign in which Trump branded his Democratic rival “Crooked Hillary”, claimed that foreign entities gave money to the Clinton Foundation in return for favors from the state department when she was secretary of state, and condemned the FBI for refusing to recommend prosecuting her for mishandling classified information.

Clinton suffered a low rating for trustworthiness in opinion polls during the contest. Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday: “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.”



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.

But the dramatic climbdown earned the wrath of conservatives who had pushed hard for Clinton’s prosecution. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said: “If Mr Trump’s appointees continue the Obama administration’s politicized spiking of a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, it would be a betrayal of his promise to the American people to ‘drain the swamp’ of out-of-control corruption in Washington, DC.

“President-elect Trump should focus on healing the broken justice system, affirm the rule of law and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton scandals.”

Breitbart, the rightwing website where Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is executive chairman, headlined its article on the subject “Broken promise”.

Ann Coulter, a commentator and author of In Trump We Trust, tweeted: “Whoa! I thought we elected @realDonaldTrump president. Did we make him the FBI, & DOJ? His job is to pick those guys, not do their jobs.”

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.

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.

Others, however, indicated that the saga might not yet be over. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Fox News: “Well, so much for ‘locking her up’, I guess. The bottom line is that I think the Clinton Foundation, the whole mess, should be looked at with an independent view, not a political agenda.

“I never believed Obama’s justice department would seriously look at what she may have done. I can understand wanting to put the election behind us and heal the nation, but I do hope all the things President-elect Trump said about how crooked she was – well, we just don’t let it go without some serious effort to see if the law was truly violated. I think that would be a mistake.”

Legal analysts agreed that Congress could still try to intervene. Henry Chambers, a professor at the University of Richmond’s school of law, said: “Congressional committees can investigate all they want. At the end of the day you don’t want presidents spiking investigations, so we may not be out of the woods in terms of the Clinton investigations.”

But Trump’s decision might be calculated to his own benefit, Chambers added. “There are interesting issues as to whether he’s playing presidential jujitsu here: ‘I’ve said Hillary Clinton should not be investigated, therefore no one should investigate me.’”

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.

“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.”

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.