- Michigan's chief election official told NBC News Trump said she should be arrested and executed for treason.
- "It was surreal and I felt sad," Jocelyn Benson said.
- A spokesman for Trump said Benson "knowingly lied throughout her interview with NBC News."
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told NBC News that President Donald Trump suggested in a meeting that she should be arrested and executed for treason after the 2020 election.
Benson, the state's chief election official, said she heard about the comments from "a source familiar with Trump's White House meeting," per NBC News. It is unclear when or in what context Trump made the alleged comment.
"It was surreal and I felt sad," Benson told NBC News.
"It certainly amplified the heightened sense of anxiety, stress and uncertainty of that time — which I still feel in many ways — because it showed there was no bottom to how far he and his supporters were willing to stoop to overturn or discredit a legitimate election," she added of Trump.
A representative for Trump, Taylor Budowich, accused Benson of making the whole thing up.
"I have it on good authority that Secretary Benson knowingly lied throughout her interview with NBC News," Budowich told the outlet.
Benson was one of the many election officials on the receiving end of attacks from Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election. She also faced harassment and violent threats following the election as Trump and his allies falsely claimed he lost due to widespread fraud.
Trump first went after Benson for sending mail ballot applications out to all voters for Michigan's primary in the spring of 2020 amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a series of tweets, Trump called Benson "rogue" and threatened to pull federal funding from Michigan and Nevada, which held an all-mail primary election in 2020.
Trump didn't follow through on his threats to pull federal funding from Michigan. But he and his allies sought to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the state.
Trump also frequently accused his political foes of treason throughout his time in office and suggested that leakers and whistleblowers should be arrested for treason and punished.
In September 2019, Trump told a crowd gathered at a private breakfast that the person who blew the whistle on his July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was "basically a spy" and guilty of treason. That conversation prompted Trump's first impeachment in the House on the grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress; he was later acquitted by the Senate.
"You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now," Trump said, according to video obtained by Bloomberg News.
Author Michael Bender also revealed in his book "Frankly, We Did Win This Election" that an enraged Trump said the person who leaked to the press that he had gone to a secure bunker under the White House during protests over racism and police brutality in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2020 should be tried and executed for treason.
"It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president," Bender wrote, quoting Trump as yelling, "'Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason! They should be executed!'"
Benson, a Democrat, is up for reelection for a second term in 2022. One of the Republicans running to replace her, Kristina Karamo, has embraced Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud and has the former president's endorsement for office.