At rallies, Trump has tried to frame the charges, which come with serious threats of jail time, as an attack not just on him, but those who support him.
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“They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he said in Erie, adding, “Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honour … Because I’m being indicted for you.”
But the investigations are also sucking up enormous resources that are being diverted from the nuts and bolts of the campaign. The Washington Post first reported on Saturday that Trump’s political action committee, Save America, will report on Monday that it spent more than $US40 million ($60 million) on legal fees during the first half of 2023 defending Trump and all the current and former aides whose lawyers it is paying. The total is more than the campaign raised during the second quarter of the year.
“In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, the leadership PAC contributed to their legal fees to ensure they have representation against unlawful harassment,” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung.
At the rally, in a former Democratic stronghold that Trump flipped in 2016 but which Biden won narrowly in 2020, Trump also threatened Republicans in Congress who refuse to go along with efforts to impeach Biden. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (a California Republican) said last week that Republican lawmakers may consider an impeachment inquiry into the president over unproven claims of financial misconduct.
Trump, who was impeached twice while in office, said on Saturday: “The biggest complaint that I get is that the Republicans find out this information and then they do nothing about it.
“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaries and get out – out!” he told the crowd to loud applause. “They have to play tough and … if they’re not willing to do it, we got a lot of good, tough Republicans around … and they’re going to get my endorsement every singe time.”
Trump, during the 2022 midterm elections, made it his mission to punish those who had voted in favour of his second impeachment. He succeeded in unseating most who had by backing primary challengers.
At the rally, Trump also called on Republican members of Congress to halt the authorisation of additional military support to Ukraine, which has been mired in a war fighting Russia’s invasion, until the Biden administration co-operates with Republican investigations into Biden and his family’s business dealings – words that echoed the call that lead to his first impeachment.
US President Joe Biden leaves St Edmund Catholic Church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday.Credit: AP
“He’s dragging into a global conflict on behalf of the very same country, Ukraine, that apparently paid his family all of these millions of dollars,” Trump alleged. “In light of this information,” Congress, he said, “should refuse to authorise a single additional payment of our depleted stockpiles … the weapons stockpiles to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family’s corrupt business dealings.”
House Republicans have been investigating the Biden family’s finances, particularly payments that Hunter, the president’s son, received from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that became tangled in the first impeachment of Trump.
An unnamed confidential FBI informant claimed that Burisma company officials in 2015 and 2016 sought to pay the Bidens $US5 million each in return for their help ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was purportedly investigating the company. But a Justice Department review in 2020, while Trump was president, was closed eight months later with insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.
Trump’s first impeachment by the House resulted in charges that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens while threatening to withhold military aid. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.
AP
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