Former President Donald Trump called his federal indictment a “sham” orchestrated by the Biden administration to interfere with the 2024 election and criticized it as “the most heinous abuse of power in the history of our country.”
Trump, now the 2024 GOP front-runner, pleaded not guilty Tuesday (June 13) in federal court in Miami, Florida, to 37 federal felony counts arising from an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into his alleged improper storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The charges include willful withholding of national security information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.
Speaking Tuesday night at his Bedminster Trump National Golf Club, Trump called Smith a “deranged lunatic” and criticized President Joe Biden for getting his “top political opponent arrested and charged.”
Trump revealed he has been subjected to “political persecution” as if directly from a “fascist or communist nation.”
The former President added that Biden will “forever be remembered” as “the most corrupt President in the history of our country,” with “thugs, misfits, and Marxists” as his closest associates and his attempts to “destroy American democracy” by channeling actual hatred and charging a U.S. President “under the Espionage Act of 1917.”
Trump has been accused, in part, of intentionally withholding information about national defense, charges that fall under the Espionage Act.
However, Trump highlighted that “The Espionage Act has been used to refer to traitors and spies,” claiming the charges have “nothing to do with a President legally keeping his own documents.”
Trump defended himself by saying the Presidential Records Act would apply to his case instead.
The former President suggested he would be facing 400 years in prison for “possessing Presidential papers,” which he emphasized, “about every other President has done.”
Trump insisted that the Presidential Records Act didn’t “confer any mandate, duty, or even discretional authority on the archivist to classify records,” noting that it was the responsibility of the U.S. President, which meant when he took the documents, he was making the decision as President.
