People living and working at Washington, D.C., appear to be very nervous about their potential legal exposure with President Trump back in the White House after the new president campaigned on a message of seeking “retribution” against those he thinks wronged him during the Biden years.

A Google feature that tracks search trends shows that searches for the term “criminal defense lawyer” started to soar in America’s capital city in January. 

A conservative commentator, Mark Mitchell, shared a screenshot of the trends on X and noted that the concern about the need for legal counsel appears to be so high that searches for the term were nearly five times higher than in Utah, which had the second most searches for the term in the country. 

During the campaign, Mr. Trump called for investigations and prosecutions of his political rivals, such as President Biden and Congresswoman Liz Cheney, among others. 

After months of calling for “retribution,” Mr. Trump said his “retribution will be through success.” However, concerns about the 47th president using the levers of government to punish his enemies led Mr. Biden to issue a wave of pre-emptive pardons to people such as Ms. Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has taken some actions against his rivals, such as revoking the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials who said a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden was potentially Russian disinformation. He also revoked Mr. Biden’s security clearance, which the 46th president did to him in 2021. 

Additionally, he revoked the security details for several top officials from his first administration, such as John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. He has yet, however, to initiate any criminal proceedings against officials in the previous administration or those with ties to it.