Trump: Documents investigation is ‘election interference’
Byron York
TRUMP: DOCUMENTS INVESTIGATION IS ‘ELECTION INTERFERENCE.’ There are reports the Biden Justice Department is on the verge of indicting former President Donald Trump in the classified documents investigation. Not only would such an indictment be the first federal charge against a former president, but it would also be the first time a sitting president’s administration has indicted a leading opposition party candidate in the run-up to a presidential election.
“They’re doing it to affect the election,” Trump said in a conversation Wednesday at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “They [are] cheating on the election just like they did the last time.”
Earlier Wednesday, journalist John Solomon, who has represented Trump in dealings with the National Archives and Records Administration, reported that federal prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, “have notified Donald Trump that he is a criminal target and likely to be indicted imminently” in the classified documents case. Solomon reported that prosecutors rejected the Trump defense team’s request that the indictment be put off so allegations of possible witness tampering can be investigated.
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“They’ll do whatever they can to win the election,” Trump said of the Justice Department. “If I were down in the polls, where I wasn’t going to win — I’m way up on Biden, by the way, far more than DeSanctimonious — if I were going to lose the election, or if I wasn’t running, they wouldn’t even waste their time. This is a civil situation. It’s a civil case. At most, it’s a civil case.”
In a move thought to precede an indictment closely, Trump’s lawyers met with Smith and other Justice Department officials in Washington on Monday. The Trump team reportedly made its final case on why Trump should not be indicted. There is no evidence it succeeded.
“This is the greatest witch hunt of all time,” Trump said. “This is election interference. I did absolutely nothing wrong. The Presidential Records Act is 100% clear. … There was no crime committed. This is a civil thing. They could sue me civilly to get things back, but every president took things when they left the White House. … And then they [go after] me criminally? I don’t think the people are going to stand for it.”
“When you say the people are not going to stand for it, what do you mean?” I asked. “Do you mean they’re going to elect you again? Or that they’re going to be out in the streets?”
“I think we’re going to win the election by a lot,” Trump answered. “Yeah, I could see protests, big protests, having nothing to do with me other than the fact that I’ve been treated very unfairly.”
In March, Trump suggested there might be violent protests if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted him. Bragg went ahead, but there were no protests. On the other hand, Jan. 6 was a huge and at times brutally violent protest. So it is not clear what public reaction, if any, would follow a federal indictment of Trump, should there be one.
Trump is the subject of a variety of criminal investigations. There is the documents case. There is another federal investigation, also run by Smith, into the events surrounding Jan. 6. There is the 2020 election investigation in Fulton County, Georgia. And there is the case against him in Manhattan. But the documents case appears to be at the center of the former president’s attention because of the indicators something big is about to happen.
In addition, when the Manhattan charges were filed, many observers, and not just Trump supporters, noted that the 34 counts against Trump were weak. Bragg had to perform legal contortions to elevate the charges into felonies, and even after filing the indictment, he has yet to fully explain the charges against Trump. The documents case, on the other hand, is thought to be much more substantial and well developed. Former Trump Attorney General William Barr has said it is the “most threatening” of the possible cases against Trump. That is one reason Trump is challenging the very basis of the documents investigation.
“There’s nothing criminal about it,” Trump said of Smith’s investigation. “They are using this, and trying to make this criminal, because of election interference. They’re trying to interfere in the election by doing this. And I think they’ll do it because I think they’re crazy. These people are crazy. … This group of people, Marxists, communists, fascists — this group of people is horrible for this country. And what they’re trying to do is practice election interference. The only difference between me and almost everybody else is that so far, every time I get sued, my poll numbers went way up. Because the American public gets it. And because I’m able to explain to people, the American public gets it.”
It is true that the Manhattan indictment seemed to give Trump a boost in the polls. The generally accepted explanation is that many Republicans, both hardcore Trump supporters and those who might prefer another candidate in 2024, saw the indictment as a continuation of unfair treatment they believe Trump received beginning in the 2016 presidential campaign.
So now, there is the question of what effect a documents indictment might have. The public might see it as a much bigger deal than the Manhattan indictment. On the other, it might also fit into those Republican voters’ big picture of Trump being unfairly targeted. In addition, it would be Trump facing an indictment from the Justice Department run by the president Trump seeks to defeat in 2024. It’s hard to say how it will play out.
“I think it might help me,” Trump said. “I mean poll-wise. Nobody wants to be indicted. But poll-wise, I think it might help me. This is not a crime. I didn’t do anything wrong here.”
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