During the entirety of the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, the would-be dictator made no secret of the fact that he felt like he legally could — and intended to — go after his political opponents and people he felt had wronged him in some way.

Now, that’s a pretty big list. He was already talking back in 2020 about prosecuting people from his FIRST administration. He still thinks Hillary Clinton should go to jail for… something, I’m not sure what.

But surely at the top of any such list of targets for retribution would be the people who used to work with him and turned on him. And following a very close second would be Republicans who he thought should have supported him, but didn’t. Especially people like Liz Cheney.

Cheney didn’t just fail to support Trump, she outright mocked his stupidity and cowardice. If there’s one thing Trump doesn’t like, it’s being mocked.

In a new interview in Politico, national security attorney Mark Zaid says it’s these folks who should take extra precautions. In fact, he says he’s personally advised people who might be in Trump’s crosshairs to lay low or even get out of town.

“There are a small number of people who I have told, ‘Look, you should take a vacation outside of the country around the time of inauguration, just to see what happens. Just go on a routine vacation and see what plays out come Jan. 20, 21st, 22nd,'” Zaid said. “By that time, we’ll know who’s going to be [in senior administration roles] and whether they will be more fundamentalist about this issue than the general politician who’s appointed into a position that requires Senate confirmation.”

Zaid wasn’t so sure that current officeholders who didn’t toe the line would be targeted necessarily, because Republicans in the House “are not going to want to see that.” And trying to wrangle votes to oust sitting members that are well-liked by House leaders might prove difficult, even for Trump.

But any that have left office might do well to make themselves scarce, he said.

“Look, you don’t have to be an expert in the intelligence community to know who would face things — people like John Brennan, Jim Clapper, maybe Liz Cheney,” he said.

The selection of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, Zaid said, was a clear indicator that Trump hasn’t softened his position any on pursuing his brand of justice. And he said that the right people in other positions might make it “very easy to go after” any people not in “immunized positions.”

“So just think about a situation where the new CIA director could be someone like Kash Patel who says, ‘Hey, by the way, John Brennan, when you appeared on CNN on Oct. 29, 2023, what you said was classified and you are going to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act,'” Zaid explained. “Is that going to happen? I have no idea. I would hope not, but depending on who is put into power in the Justice Department, in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, at the CIA, as the Director of National Intelligence — the law would allow that.”

Trump will, of course, have to be careful what he does with both total Republican control and the immunity granted to him earlier this year by the Supreme Court for acts undertaken “in the course of presidential duties.”

Trump will undoubtedly want to find a way to extend that immunity to others that he’s deemed loyal enough, so he can’t rule out the fact that some of the people he’ll want retribution against might be able to fall under the same umbrella of protection. And the further any leader goes with unchecked power — especially when we’re talking about going through a revenge checklist — the further those who come after his presidency may go against him and his cohorts.

Trump will undoubtedly have expert, or at least creative, legal minds on the job to best suit his purposes in exacting his revenge. And with the Supreme Court as friendly to him as it is and has proven itself to be, there are any number of ways that Trump might be able to carry out a plan like this.

And in the end, he may not even care about potential ramifications in the future. He certainly hasn’t showed a lot of concern for getting in trouble later on historically.

For now, Mark Zaid may be right. It could be time for some of the folks that Trump has been talking about “going after” in the courts to conveniently disappear for a while.