Trump calls his prosecution ‘the most evil and heinous abuse of power’
Former President Donald Trump delivered a blistering and defiant speech from his New Jersey golf club hours after pleading not guilty to federal charges – calling the prosecution 'the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country.'
Trump began his remarks by going after President Joe Biden, but soon went down memory lane talking about Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Dick Cheney.
‘I did everything right and they indicted me,’ he complained while surrounded by supporters in front of his clubhouse after spending his day dealing with the criminal justice system.
He blasted prosecutors for ‘threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers’ – brushing aside the indictment, which accuses him of willfully maintaining national security information at properties including the Bedminster, New Jersey club where he spoke.
That could be the total length of the sentence if Trump were to be convicted of each count against him, in what he termed ‘a political persecution like something out of a fascist or communist nation.’
He claimed Biden would go down in history as ‘the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy.’
That is a charge the House January 6 committee leveled at him about his election overturn effort. Federal prosecutors doing their own probe appear to be moving with haste.
He pointed to the use of the 1917 Espionage Act to go after him for alleged violations of willful possession of national security information, after the indictment said he had nuclear information at Mar-a-Lago and claimed to have Pentagon attack plans at the Bedminster club where he was speaking.
Trump termed it ‘one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.’
The former president suggested that other political figures had gotten away with much worse.
‘He lost the nuclear codes,’ Trump claimed of Bill Clinton, who he called a ‘nice guy.’
‘They should have used him a little bit more as an adviser in the 2016 election,’ Trump also joked, alluding to how he beat Clinton’s wife Hillary in the presidential election that year.
Trump also charged that George W. Bush’s White House ‘lost 22 million emails.’
‘A document shredding truck was spotted on the way to Dick Cheney’s house. Can you imagine?’ the former president added.
