Former President Donald Trump joked Friday that he would win the 2024 election if he was hit with “one more indictment” during a speech before a dinner held by the Alabama Republican Party.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges during his Thursday arraignment after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment of Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election after Smith previously secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June based on an investigation into allegations surrounding classified documents. (RELATED: Trump Lawyer Says He’ll Use ‘Very Simple’ Strategy Of Pointing Out Jack Smith ‘Has The Entire Law … Wrong’)
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“They wanted to wait, and they did wait,” Trump said. “They waited right to the middle of an election and they waited until I became the dominant force in the polls because we’re dominating everybody, including Biden in the polls, and then they filed `em all, every one of of all that essentially one time, including local DA’s and AGs that even other cases right in the middle of the campaign, where we’re leading by so much and that’s not going to make any impact, because every time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls. We need one more indictment to close out this election, one more indictment and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.”
Trump currently leads Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Real Clear Politics average of polls, 53.1% to 17.6%, with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy in third place with 5.2%.
Legal experts noted that much of the conduct Smith claimed was criminal in the indictment appeared to be protected by the First Amendment. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz said that the indictment not only attacked the First Amendment, but also Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Trump’s top rivals for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all condemned the indictment.
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