Skip to main content

USA | Trump says he will end moratorium on federal executions on his first day in office, and use full force of the law to go after major drug dealers and cop killers

Trump sat down with DailyMail.com for an interview at his Mar-a-Lago home. He talked about the campaign and his plans for day one in the White House.

Donald Trump says he will end the Justice Department moratorium on executions on his first day in office, and use the full force of the law to go after major drug dealers and cop killers.

The Trump campaign sees crime, in general, and Kamala Harris's record as a prosecutor in California, in particular, as areas where they can inflict damage on her presidential bid.

And in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Trump laid out more details of his crime-fighting agenda starting with whether he would reverse the Biden-Harris administration's freeze on federal executions.  

'Of course I would. I would have executions on major drug dealers,' he said when asked if it would be a day-one priority. 

'I would have, perhaps, the raping of a child, the killing of a police officer. 

'I would have executions on the people that violently kill people.'

Trump's administration restored the use of the federal death penalty in 2019. And 13 federal death row inmates were executed, before Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a halt in July 2021.

Some 27 states have the death penalty on their books, although seven have also suspended executions.

Trump has brought up the theme of tougher penalties for a range of crimes on the campaign trail to portray himself as the candidate of law and order.

Last week he was at the border with Mexico where he highlighted the damage done by cartels and smugglers, and met with grieving mothers..

'We have people coming into this country. I just left a number of them last week, as you saw. at the border, where their daughters were killed, their sons were killed' he said. 

'Their sons were killed by thugs and migrants coming into our country, and they viciously ... they were viciously and violently killed and stuffed into garbage cans.'

Drug dealers responsible for hundreds of deaths should also face the ultimate sanction, he said. 

'The average drug dealer kills 500 people during that person's lifetime. I would have no problem with that. If you're going to stop the drug epidemic, you're going to have to have a death penalty,' he added.

Trump has used rallies and speeches to attack his election opponent, who rose from the San Francisco district attorney's office to become California attorney general, as soft on crime.

Last week, at a Michigan sheriff's office, he called her a police 'defunder' and a pro-crime 'Marxist prosecutor.' 

'We’re here today to talk about how we are going to stop the Kamala crime wave that is going on at levels that nobody’s ever seen before,' he said last Tuesday.

'She is, as you know, the most radical left person ever even thought of for a high office.'

For its part, the Harris campaign has shrugged off his attacks, painting the contest as a former prosecutor against a '34-time convicted felon,' in a reference to the New York hush money case in which Trump was found guilty on all counts.

And it accused him of lying 'about crime, which skyrocketed on his watch, about policing, which he tried to defund, and about the January 6 insurrectionists who attacked police officers defending our Capitol at his behest.

'Donald Trump can’t bring us together so he tries to drive us apart. The American people will reject his failed leadership and divisive agenda this November.'

Harris has enjoyed a bump in her poll and fundraising numbers since she became the Democratic nominee for president.

But Trump said he had won a string of key endorsements and felt his campaign had gone from strength to strength.

During the interview, in the gilded splendor living room of Mar-a-Lago—the club's most lavish reception room—also slammed Harris for waiting so long to give an interview, and laid out his unease with Florida's strict abortion law.

This issue is a tricky one for Trump as he tried to keep his evangelical supporters on board without alienating women voters.

He has tried to keep all sides happy by saying abortion is an issue for states to decide. But Florida, where he lives, is holding a referendum on expanding access to abortion from its newly enacted six-week limit. He said he had made up his mind on the issue.

'Well, I do know, but I do want more than six weeks,' he said. 'I want more than six weeks. 

'I think six weeks is a mistake. And I'll be expressing that soon, but I want more than six weeks. 

'And in Florida, we have a six-week program, and that's what I believe that you're voting on, and I think it should be more than six weeks.'

Source: Mail Online, Rob Crilly, August 30, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________








"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde



Most viewed (Last 7 days)

Texas | Death Sentence Overturned After 48 Years

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that Clarence Jordan’s punishment was unconstitutional  A death sentence handed down by a Harris County jury in 1978 was overturned Thursday by the Court of Criminal Appeals.  Clarence Jordan, 70, has been on Texas Death Row for almost 50 years, serving out one of the longest death sentences in the nation while suffering from intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia, his attorney told the Houston Press. 

Florida | Tampa Bay man who killed wife, 3 family members sentenced to die

Shelby Nealy will be executed by the state for bludgeoning his wife’s family to death in 2018, a judge decided Friday. During a two-week sentencing trial in July, jurors heard how Nealy, 32, ended a volatile relationship with his second wife by killing her, then murdered her parents and brother a year later in an effort to never be caught. He pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2023. On July 25, the jury of three men and nine women deliberated for about two hours and voted 11-1 that Nealy should be sentenced to death. He stared straight ahead as the verdict was read.

Texas appeals court says another man's confession not enough to reconsider Broadnax execution

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said Tuesday it won't consider another man's confession as a reason to pause a scheduled lethal injection in three weeks. James Broadnax was convicted of murdering two Christian music producers in Garland, but his cousin, Demarius Cummings, recently confessed that he was the shooter. University of Texas School of Law Capital Punishment Clinic professor Jim Marcus said the appeals court acts as a gatekeeper for cases meeting criteria to get back in court.

US AG Authorizes Federal Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Three LA Gangsters Charged with Murder

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has directed federal prosecutors in Los Angeles to seek the death penalty against three members of a transnational street gang charged with murdering a former gang member who was cooperating with law enforcement on a racketeering and methamphetamine trafficking case, officials announced Thursday. In a letter to First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli on Wednesday, Blanche told prosecutors in the Central District of California they are “authorized and directed” to seek the death penalty against Dennis Anaya Urias, 27, Grevil Zelaya Santiago, 26, and Roberto Carlos Aguilar, 31. All are from South Los Angeles.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term:   Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

North Carolina | “Incapable to proceed”: man who killed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska ruled incompetent

DeCarlos Brown, accused of stabbing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train, has been found mentally unfit for trial, stalling death penalty proceedings. DeCarlos Brown Jr., accused of fatally stabbing 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train in August 2025, has been found mentally incapable of standing trial, according to a court motion filed 7 April in Mecklenburg Superior Court. A 29 December 2025 report from Central Regional Hospital, a state psychiatric facility in Granville County, concluded that Brown was "incapable to proceed to trial," according to the motion filed by his attorney, Daniel Roberts. The evaluation was ordered after Brown's defense raised concerns about his mental state.

Saudi Arabia | Seven executed for drug trafficking

Saudi authorities executed seven people who had been convicted of drug trafficking in a single day, state media says. The Saudi Press Agency says five Saudis and two Jordanians were found guilty of trafficking amphetamine pills into the kingdom. “The death penalty was carried out as a discretionary punishment against the perpetrators,” the agency reports, adding that the executions took place on Sunday in the Riyadh region. Since the beginning of 2026, Riyadh has executed 38 people in drug-related cases, the majority of the 61 executions carried out, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Former FedEx driver pleads guilty to killing 7-year-old girl after making delivery at her Texas home

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tanner Lynn Horner, a former contract delivery driver for FedEx, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a move that abruptly shifted the proceedings into a high-stakes punishment phase where jurors will decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty. Horner, 34, entered the plea in a Tarrant County courtroom as his trial was set to begin. The case was moved to Fort Worth from neighboring Wise County last year after defense attorneys argued that pretrial publicity would prevent a fair trial in the community where the girl disappeared.

Florida Schedules Two Executions for Late April

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has directed the Florida Department of Corrections to move forward with two executions scheduled for late April 2026, marking a significant ramp-up in the state's use of capital punishment. The scheduled deaths of Chadwick Willacy and James Ernest Hitchcock follow a series of landmark judicial rulings that have kept both men on death row for decades.

China executes Frenchman convicted in 2010 for drug trafficking

Chan Thao Phoumy, a 62-year-old Frenchman born in Laos, was executed, “despite the efforts of the French authorities, including efforts to obtain a pardon on humanitarian grounds for our compatriot”, said a foreign ministry statement. Phoumy, who was born in Laos, had been sentenced to death in 2010 following a conviction for drug trafficking. Despite sustained diplomatic pressure and formal requests for clemency on humanitarian grounds, Chinese authorities proceeded with the capital sentence.  A massive drug manufacturing and distribution operation Chan Thao Phoumy was convicted for his involvement in a massive drug manufacturing and distribution operation that remains one of the largest drug-related cases in Chinese history. Phoumy and his accomplices were convicted of manufacturing approximately 8 tons of crystal methamphetamine between 1999 and 2003.