Trump's promise of payback for prosecution follows years of attacking democratic traditions

As Donald Trump became the first former president to face federal charges, he and his supporters went through a familiar routine of mounting a victimhood defense in the face of unprecedented allegations of wrongdoing. But this time, the stakes are higher.

Trump upped the level of his claims and threats as he faces the potential of years in prison if convicted on 37 charges of obstruction, illegal retention of defense information and other violations. Hours after pleading not guilty, Trump claimed he is being targeted by the special prosecutor for political reasons and vowed to retaliate against President Joe Biden if he is elected president in 2024.

"There was an unwritten rule" to not prosecute former presidents and political rivals, Trump told supporters in a speech at his golf club in New Jersey. "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family."

The vow is reminiscent of the "lock her up" chants against Democrat Hillary Clinton that Trump led during his 2016 campaign, but the new level of specificity alarmed many experts.

"If he did that, it'd be an authoritarian system, the end of a system of laws rather than of one man," said Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian.

Even as he pledges to retaliate if elected, Trump and his supporters claim he is being targeted in a way that is similar to authoritarian regimes — such as in Russia, where opponents of President Vladimir Putin have been jailed, or Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro's chief rival was prosecuted.

There is no evidence that Biden made the sort of pledge to target Trump that the former president has now made, and the president said he never tried to influence the Justice Department on any case.

Trump's attacks on the justice system are the latest step in a now eight-year campaign by the former president and his allies against the traditions and institutions that have helped maintain American democracy.

Trump has long complained about being unfairly treated by the legal system, from contending that the judge in a lawsuit against his for-profit university was biased against him to targeting the FBI over its probe of Russian interference in his 2016 win.

He even vowed retribution in that case, assigning a special prosecutor to review how the investigation into his campaign's possible coordination with Russia was handled, which led to only one conviction.

That track record makes his pledge of retribution more menacing, said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group advocating for better government.

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"He has shown repeatedly during his presidency that he is perfectly willing to misuse and abuse his office to carry out purely personal activities," Wertheimer said.

Stephen Saltzburg, a former top official in the criminal division of the Justice Department who is now a George Washington University law professor, said Trump was signaling that he would use the department to settle scores — just the thing he is claiming led to his indictment.

"This is typical of what Donald Trump does," Saltzburg said. "He essentially accuses people of doing what he would do if he were in the position."

The indictment came from a grand jury in Trump's adopted state of Florida after an investigation led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, who is independent of political appointees in the Biden administration and previously prosecuted Democrats as well as Republicans.

Speaking after the indictment was made public, Smith stressed that investigations such as the one into the documents follow the facts and the law.

"We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone," he said.

Many experts of all political persuasions said the charges against Trump stem from the proper functioning of the legal system, rather than a political vendetta. William Barr, Trump' s former attorney general, said the allegations in the indictment were serious and that Trump had no right to keep such documents.

"There is not an attorney general of either party who would not have brought today's charges against the former president," Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who was a conservative favorite for a Supreme Court post, wrote on Twitter.

According to the indictment, Trump held onto classified documents after leaving the White House, admitted on tape that they were classified and that he no longer had the presidential power to declassify them, then refused to return the records when the government demanded them back.

Trump's complaints about being persecuted are standard for former political leaders in other countries who are charged with crimes, said Victor Menaldo, a political scientist at the University of Washington.

"It makes sense politically if the leader has a rabid support group like Trump," Menaldo said. But in other countries, he said, the leaders are usually successfully prosecuted, and democracy continues.

Photos: Trump indictment shows documents stacked in bathroom, bedroom, ballroom