Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Friday that her office is investigating whether former President Donald Trump’s violent remarks about former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney broke the law.
“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Mayes, a Democrat, said during a taping of “Sunday Square Off” on 12NEWS in Phoenix.
“I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state,” Mayes told the NBC affiliate.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Richie Taylor, confirmed to NBC News the office is “looking into” whether Trump’s remarks violated Arizona law. NBC News reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
At an event in Arizona with Tucker Carlson on Thursday, Trump suggested that Cheney wouldn’t be such a “war hawk” if she had guns “trained on her face.”
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said. “Okay, let’s see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face — you know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building.”
In a post on his Truth Social account Friday afternoon, Trump said that Cheney “wouldn’t have ‘the guts’ to fight herself. It’s easy for her to talk, sitting far from where the death scenes take place, but put a gun in her hand, and let her go fight, and she’ll say, ‘No thanks!’” In remarks to reporters later Friday, Trump defended his comments on Cheney, calling her a war hawk again and saying that “she kills people”
Earlier in the day, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Trump was “100% correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves.”
Trump has escalated his violent rhetoric on the campaign trail in the last month. He’s called Democrats and his opponents the “enemy from within” and has vowed to use the U.S. military against American citizens. He has also said during the 2024 race that he might jail his political opponents.
Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that former President Trump’s remarks on Cheney should be “disqualifying.”
“He has increased his violent rhetoric, Donald Trump has, about political opponents and in great detail, in great detail suggested rifles should be trained on former Rep. Liz Cheney,” Harris told reporters after landing near Madison, Wisconsin.
“This must be disqualifying. Anyone who wants to be president of the United States, who uses that kind of violent rhetoric, is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president,” she added.
Harris said that Trump is “permanently out for revenge” and he’s “increasingly unstable and unhinged.” “His enemy’s list has grown longer, his rhetoric has grown more extreme, and he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people,” she said.
Asked to comment on Harris’ remarks, Leavitt reiterated his statement from earlier in the day.
NBC News reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the Arizona investigation.
Annemarie Bonner contributed.
