The former US president says his successor is attempting to \u2018jail his leading political opponent\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former US President Donald Trump told supporters on Saturday that his White House successor, Joe Biden, is employing \u201cStalinist\u201d tactics to stamp out his political opponents ahead of the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his first public comments since the unsealing of a 37-count indictment on charges of mishandling classified government secrets on Friday, Trump told a crowd of Republican state party delegates and guests in Columbus, Georgia that the claims against him were \u201ca political hit job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBiden is trying to jail his leading political opponent,\u201d a defiant Trump said during an 84-minute speech. \u201cJust like they [did] in Stalinist Russia or in Communist China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, who was criminally indicted in April in New York on campaign finance charges, added that \u201clawless partisan prosecutors\u201d appear to issue him with a subpoena \u201cevery time I fly over a blue state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The charges unsealed by special prosecutor Jack Smith in Miami allege that Trump was complicit in the illegal retention of classified national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. It is also claimed in the charges that Trump lied to investigators. Lawyers representing Trump resigned a day after he was notified of the federal indictment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event in Georgia, which took place without the presence of the state\u2019s Republican governor and frequent Trump critic Brian Kemp, also saw the ex-president repeatedly attack Biden for what he said were ineffective economic policies. He also said he believed Biden\u2019s weakness on the world stage proved that the US is \u201ca nation in decline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you took the worst five presidents in the history of the United States and added them up,\u201d Trump calculated, \u201cthey would not have done near the destruction to our country as Joe Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump remains the GOP frontrunner to oppose Biden in the 2024 presidential election in spite of deepening legal issues. He also faces probes into his role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol and an investigation \u2013 coincidentally in Georgia \u2013 related to claims that he pressured officials in the state to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Trump, who also told Politico that he\u2019ll \u201cnever leave\u201d his campaign for president regardless of any charges against him, made clear one element of his platform for 2024. \u201cWe will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, and we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country,\u201d he vowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n