Trump turns day in court into campaign event
MIAMI - Hours after former President Donald Trump, accused of being careless with some of the country's most sensitive secrets and obstructing authorities as they tried to recover critical documents, pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges in Miami, he turned the day into a campaign event in New Jersey.
"Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. It's a very sad thing to watch, a corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a presidential election in which he's losing very badly," he said.
He spoke Tuesday night at a fundraising event at his Bedminster golf resort, where he is spending the summer.
"This day will go down in infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as the most corrupt president in the history of our country," he said. "They will fail and we will win bigger and better than ever before."
In a maundering speech, Trump grimaced and repeated his claims of the investigation being politically motivated, called prosecutors "thugs" and claimed he was so busy that he hadn't had time to go through all the boxes of documents and memorabilia he had kept.
The indictment unsealed last week charged Trump with 37 felony counts - many under the Espionage Act - that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower and other locations at Mar-a-Lago and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded them back. The charges carry a yearslong prison sentence in the event of a conviction.
"Threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law," he told the crowd.
Trump also said that if elected president next year, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate President Joe Biden and his family.
Trump is the first former president charged with federal crimes.
It's the second criminal case Trump faces as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024. He's also accused in New York state court of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign.
The former commander-in-chief also has other legal worries on his mind.
A separate Justice Department investigation, also led by special counsel Jack Smith, into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election continues in Washington. A federal grand jury has heard from witnesses including Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence.
A probe in Georgia is examining Trump's efforts to interfere with his narrow loss in the state's 2020 election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has suggested that any charges would come in August.
Trump also faces a civil trial in October in New York related to allegations he and his company misled banks and tax authorities over the values of their assets.
And on Tuesday, shortly after Trump appeared in court in Florida, a federal judge in New York ruled against him in a civil case for sexual abuse and defamation. The judge granted a request from a columnist who won a $5 million award against Trump to update a similar lawsuit to include his more recent public comments about her. She is seeking more than $10 million against him in the amended lawsuit.