Harris shutting down 'lock him up' chants shields Trump's federal Jan. 6 case from even more delays

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ efforts to shut down “lock him up” chants targeting Donald Trump at Harris-Walz rallies this week may be an effort to avoid engaging in the type of rhetoric seen at Trump rallies in 2016.

But there’s also a very practical reason for Harris to avoid showing any support for that type of language: Any comments or signs of approval she makes could further delay or complicate the pending federal criminal charges Trump is facing. That includes the Jan. 6 and 2020 election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

If Harris wins the election in November, Trump’s Jan. 6 case — though weakened by the Supreme Court — will continue to move toward trial. As sitting vice president in the administration that appointed the attorney general with oversight of the case, any comments Harris makes related to the trial could be fodder for the former president’s lawyers to argue in court that her comments interfered with Trump’s due process rights. That includes any suggestion that locking up Trump would be an explicit goal (as Trump repeatedly said about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign).

When a “lock him up” chant broke out at a Harris rally in Wisconsin this week, she said to supporters, “We’re gonna let the courts handle that,” and used a similar line when the same chant broke out at another rally. “Our job is to beat him in November,” she said.

Harris, a former prosecutor herself, has been cautious in her references to the array of civil and criminal cases that Trump has faced in recent years. Harris is aware of the impact she could have on Trump’s pending federal cases and has surrounded herself with Justice Department veterans — including her brother-in-law, Tony West, a former top DOJ official, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who vetted her vice presidential candidates.

But Harris does not face the same limitations in discussing any state and local cases against Trump, or those that have already been adjudicated.

“I was elected a United States senator. I was elected attorney general of the state of California. And I was a courtroom prosecutor before then,” Harris said at her first campaign rally last month, a line she’s since echoed. “And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”

A close read of Harris’ references — to predators who abuse women, to fraudsters who ripped off consumers, and to cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain — appear to be nods to other civil or criminal cases Trump has faced, not the Jan. 6 case he is currently facing. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll; earlier this year, a New York judge ordered Trump to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for civil fraud; and Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in May in a case that involved breaking campaign finance rules to make a hush money payments to an adult film actor during the 2016 campaign.

Harris, who herself came within feet of a pipe bomb that had been left at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on the eve of Jan. 6, 2021, will face a complex task at any debates when it comes to discussions of the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to stay in office after his 2020 loss.

She is also likely to avoid much discussion of Trump’s handling of classified documents: While a Trump-appointed federal judge dismissed a federal case involving his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the Justice Department has appealed and the case could ultimately survive.

“Her campaign position is complicated by the fact that she’s a member of the administration, the same way that it would have been complicated for” President Joe Biden, said Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who now represents numerous Jan. 6 defendants. Add on top of that, noted Shipley, Harris herself is a lawyer, which would create possible ethical issues if she spoke about pending cases.

There are Justice Department rules about communicating with the media about ongoing cases, and there’s a DOJ tradition of seeking to speak within the “four corners,” meaning information about ongoing cases comes from court filings, not through media pronouncements. While those rules are binding only on the Justice Department, part of Harris’ pitch to voters is that she would respect the lines between the Justice Department and the White House that have existed for decades, since the Watergate scandal.

Asked by NBC News why she has shut down “lock him up” chants, the Harris campaign said in a statement that the vice president is focused on getting voters to stop Trump in November.

“Vice President Harris has a simple message: there is one way to stop Donald Trump and his harmful Project 2025 agenda and it’s at the ballot box this November,” a campaign official said.

The Trump campaign responded to a question about the chants by saying they “would be funny if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden had not literally weaponized the justice system against President Trump in an attempt to imprison him ahead of the election.”

The Trump campaign and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump, although the federal charges against him were brought by an independent special counsel, Smith, who has aggressively pursued cases against both Democrats and Republicans.

During the Biden administration, the Justice Department appointed another special counsel, a former Trump appointee, who secured the conviction of Biden’s son Hunter Biden on gun charges. A third special counsel, a Republican previously appointed as a top federal prosecutor by Trump, oversaw an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents and decided not to move forward with charges.