GREENSBORO, N.C. − In his first public speech since his second indictment, Donald Trump on Saturday urged followers in Georgia and beyond to vote for him as a way to get back at the government agencies that are investigating him.
“Either they win or we win” in 2024, Trump told delegates at the Georgia Republican Party convention after lengthy and error-filled diatribes about indictments, trials and pending investigations in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Atlanta.
Trump denounced this week’s indictment over classified documents as “a demented persecution,” and pledged to “smash” the system behind a series of investigations. At one point, he described the 2024 election as “the final battle.”
Claiming that the Biden administration is using the legal system to damage his 2024 candidacy, Trump told the Republicans gathered in Columbus, Ga., that “I will never yield.”
Trump is expected to make similar pleas Saturday night at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Greensboro.
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Trump’s escalated attacks on law enforcement came two days after he announced that he had been indicted on charges of improperly taking sensitive classified documents from the White House. The indictment unsealed on Friday also accused him of illegally obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
Trump is charged “with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice,” Special Counsel Jack Smith said on Friday.
In his speech to Georgia Republicans, Trump launched a litany of complaints about past investigations of him, including Russian election interference in 2016 and his request that the government of Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Denouncing the indictment as a “political hit job,” Trump gave meandering and misleading accounts of his handling of classified documents and the subsequent investigations. He gave similar accounts of cases involving President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In a speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes, the 2024 Republican frontrunner interspersed various economic and foreign policy proposals with length denunciations of the many investigations of his conduct.
Trump’s first indictment came in late March in New York state court, charges that arose from hush money payments to an ex-mistress.
Two investigations of Trump are still going on, including one in Georgia.
In extended remarks to the Georgia GOP, Trump went on another lengthy complaint about the investigation in that state, including a number of debunked conspiracy theories. Trump said he had the right to complain about an election he claimed was “rigged.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled a decision regarding a new indictment of Trump could come sometime between July 11 and Sept. 1.
In the meantime, Special Counsel Smith – who headed up the documents investigation – is also looking at Trump’s actions leading up to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
Most of Trump’s Republican opponents have defended him over the latest indictment, to the dismay of party members who are urging the party to move on.
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Alyssa Farah Griffin, a communications director for the Trump White House, said on social media that she is “feeling sad for our nation” and that “watching many of my fellow Republicans tie themselves into knots to try to defend clearly wrong actions is heartbreaking.”
“We don’t have to do this again,” she tweeted. “We have a qualified field we can rally behind & leave Trump & his baggage behind.”
