Could Donald Trump really jail Hillary Clinton if he becomes president?

Legal experts weigh in on whether Trump could appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of stateDonald Trump said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

There were plenty to pick from, but arguably the most shocking moment in Sunday night’s presidential debate came when Donald Trump responded to Hillary Clinton’s statement that it was just as well her opponent was not in charge of the law.
“Because you’d be in jail,” retorted Trump, who had also just said that, if elected, he would instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Eric Holder, the former attorney general, tweeted: “Be afraid of any candidate who says he will order DOJ/FBI to act on his command This is dangerous/so is @realDonaldTrump – he’s not qualified.”
He added: “In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents. @realDonaldTrump said he would. He is promising to abuse the power of the office.”
Others compared Trump to dictators such as Uganda’s Idi Amin.
Chants of “Lock her up” are a regular feature of Trump’s rallies, but on Monday his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway claimed that the threat “was a quip” and that he was “channeling the frustration of thousands of voters he hears every day”. Legal experts argued that, even in the increasingly unlikely event of a Trump presidency, the odds of Clinton being put behind bars are “infinitesimally small” in a constitutional democracy born out of revolution against the absolute power of monarchs.
Henry Chambers, a professor at the University of Richmond’s school of law, said: “He could start the ball rolling by suggesting to the Department of Justice that it start an investigation, but even then it’s kind of nuts. The idea that he could decide on his own, ‘I will put Hillary Clinton in jail,’ is bizarre squared. He himself would be threatened with impeachment.”