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Former president Donald Trump decried what he characterized as the “fake and fabricated charges” brought against him by the Department of Justice in a half-hour speech on the evening of his arraignment
Addressing a crowd of around 900 loyalists at his Bedminster resort in New Jersey, Trump referred to Jack Smith’s indictment of him as “election interference” and “political persecution.”
“This day will go down in infamy,” he told his adoring fans, claiming that Biden wanted to see him spend “400 years in prison” for “possessing my own presidential papers.”
In an apparent preview of his legal defense, Trump referred to how he was “legally keeping his own documents” thanks to the Presidential Records Act and claiming “absolute declassification authority as president.”
“I had every right to have these documents,” he said, claiming a right to possess “whatever documents a president chooses to take with him.”
His defense is contradicted by part of Smith’s indictment, which cites a July 2021 recording by an “author,” seemingly Trump former chief of staff Mark Meadows. On the recording Trump is showing documents to his visitors and says, “See as president I could have declassified it… Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“These boxes were containing all kinds of personal belongings,” Trump said in his Bedminster address, explaining why he had taken the boxes of documents from the White House and lending further credence to what Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella has branded the “my boxes” theory.
He compared his plight to that of his presidential opponents, Biden and Hillary Clinton, before the Bedminster guests broke into a chorus of “Happy Birthday” (he turns seventy-seven tomorrow). “Nice birthday isn’t it?” he remarked.
Trump also branded Special Counsel Jack Smith “not such a nice person,” “a deranged lunatic” and “a raging and uncontrolled Trump hater.”
“The seal is now broken,” Trump said, regarding the weaponization of government powers against American political leaders, before pledging to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Joe Biden and to “obliterate the Deep State.”
The second prong of Special Counsel Smith’s investigation, into Trump’s role in the January 6 riots at the Capitol in 2021, remains ongoing.
