Donald Trump turned his newest charges into a 2024 campaign pitch on Wednesday, but he was chastised by his former vice president, who accused him of relying on “crackpot lawyers” for guidance.
The twice-impeached Republican has remained defiant despite mounting legal problems, including the unprecedented 45-page indictment unsealed Tuesday, which claims that while still president, he jeopardized the fundamentals of American democracy by plotting to reverse the 2020 election results.
Former Vice President Mike Pence was a major participant in the case, providing prosecutors with “contemporaneous notes” he took detailing the efforts to overturn the election result.
Pence, who is expected to be a key witness in any eventual prosecution, slammed Trump on Wednesday for pressing him to defy voters’ wishes by refusing to declare Joe Biden’s election victory at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol that day called for Pence to be hanged over his refusal.
“Anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence, who is also running for the Republican nomination, told reporters in Indianapolis.
“I had no right to overturn the election and… what the president maintained that day and frankly, has said over and over again over the last two and a half years, is completely false.”
“Sadly the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers who kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear,” Pence, whose refusal to do as Trump asked on January 6 forms a key part of the indictment, said.
Trump spent part of the morning playing golf at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club, according to CBS TV broadcast images.
He also vented online about the new indictments, the third time he has been criminally charged this year, keeping up his refrain that the election was rigged.
– ‘Speedy trial’ –
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the 77-year-old suggested the indictment was all the more reason for his supporters to circle the wagons and elect him next year.
“I have never had so much support on anything before,” Trump said in a five-sentence post written in all caps.
“This unprecedented indictment of a former (highly successful!) president, & the leading candidate, by far, in both the Republican Party and the 2024 general election, has awoken the world to the corruption, scandal & failure that has taken place in the United States for the past three years,” he added.
“America is a nation in decline, but we will make it great again, greater than ever before.”
The comments are the latest by the pugnacious ex-president insisting the charges against him are “fake,” and that President Joe Biden is actively seeking to derail the campaign of his political rival.
With speculation mounting about when the case could go to court after special counsel Jack Smith said he is seeking a “speedy trial,” a Trump attorney weighed in to warn that rushing the process would only confirm to observers that the indictment is “about pure politics.”
“The government has had three years to investigate this, and now they want to rush this to trial in the middle of a political season? What does that tell you?” Trump attorney John Lauro said on CNN.
“We deserve as much time as any American citizen to defend on these issues… and for the government to have three years to do it and then expect us to do it in three weeks or four weeks is just ridiculous.”
Trump is already facing criminal charges for mishandling confidential papers at his Florida resort after leaving the White House, as well as hush-money payments to a pornographic actress in 2016.
Georgia authorities are also investigating if Trump attempted to fraudulently reverse the outcome of the 2020 election in the southern state.
Despite his legal problems, Trump retains the support of a sizable portion of his party. He has a sizable lead in surveys for the Republican nomination, and his lead over his nearest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is expected to grow.