Former US president Donald Trump has said he will “obliterate the deep state” and will appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Joe Biden and his family if he is re-elected to the White House.
Addressing supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey on Tuesday night, Mr Trump argued that the indictment against him represented “the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country”.
Mr Trump spoke just hours after he pleaded not guilty in a Miami court to all 37 counts against him relating to his handling of classified documents, which he brought to his home and club in Florida after leaving the White House.
In his address, he lashed out at current president Mr Biden, Jack Smith, the special counsel who carried out the investigation into the classified document controversy and former president Bill Clinton and his 2016 rival for the presidency Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump claimed that a sitting president had “his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges in which he and other presidents would’ve been guilty of — right in the middle of a presidential campaign in which he was losing badly”.
Interference
The former president described the federal charges against him in Miami as “election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election.”
He insisted that under legislation he had the right to have the documents at his home and club in Florida and gave some indication as to why he wanted the material. He said that in addition to having every right under the Presidential Records Act, these boxes contained all personal belongings including, shirts, shoes and photographs.
[ Trump court appearance: ‘I just had to come and show my support'Opens in new window ]
“I hadn’t had the chance to go through all the boxes,” he said. “It’s a long tedious job. I have a busy life.”
The former president described Mr Smith as a “raging and uncontrolled Trump hater” who he alleged “does political hit jobs”.
He again raised the issue of Ms Clinton using a private email server when she was US secretary of state and the destruction of 33,000 emails. He claimed that Ms Clinton had taken furniture and china from the White House and alleged that Mr Clinton had “lost the nuclear codes” when he was president.
Mr Trump also made allegations of corruption against Mr Biden and suggested the timing of his indictment was arranged to draw attention away from bribery claims highlighted by Republicans in the House of Representatives. Mr Biden has rejected these allegations.
‘Crime family’
Mr Trump said he would if re-elected to the White House appoint a “real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of United States, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family”.
The former president also promised that he would “totally obliterate the deep state”.
[ Trump pleads not guilty to mishandling highly-classified documentsOpens in new window ]
“We know who they are. I know exactly who they are. They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom.”
Meanwhile, in a separate development on Tuesday, a judge in New York has allowed the former columnist E Jean Carroll to revise a defamation case she has filed against Mr Trump arising from remarks allegedly made in 2019 to include further comments made by the former president in recent weeks.
Ms Carroll last month was awarded $5 million by a jury in New York after it found Mr Trump had sexually abused her about 30 years ago and then defamed her by denying the attack. Shortly after the judgement, Mr Trump made further comments about the writer.
