HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Republican front-runner Donald Trump said the charges accusing him of mishandling classified documents should be dropped now that a special counsel investigation declined to charge President Biden, mischaracterizing the alleged conduct underlying both cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he\u2019s not going to be charged, that\u2019s up to them,\u201d Trump said in a speech Friday to a National Rifle Association expo here. \u201cBut then I should not be charged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks came a day after special counsel Robert K. Hur concluded that Biden carelessly kept classified documents and notebooks at his home but said the evidence wasn\u2019t strong enough to charge the president with crimes. Hur\u2019s report specified how Biden alerted authorities, voluntarily returned records and consented to searches, whereas special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s indictment against Trump accused the former president of refusing to return records and enlisting others to destroy evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral material distinctions between Mr. Trump\u2019s case and Mr. Biden\u2019s are clear,\u201d Hur wrote in his report released Thursday. \u201cMost notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Smith\u2019s indictment, Trump told his staff to move some boxes out of the storage area where they were kept, including the day before FBI agents came to retrieve them. The prosecutors also accused Trump of trying to cover his tracks by ordering aides to delete security footage. They also obtained a tape of Trump discussing material that he knew was secret.<\/p>\n
Trump, however, argued that he was more cooperative than Biden. The former president claimed he served lunch to the FBI at his club, apparently referring to a June 2022 meeting at Mar-a-Lago between his lawyers and a senior Justice Department official and several FBI agents that preceded the court-authorized search in August 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cooperated far more than Biden did,\u201d he said. \u201cBiden fought them all the way. I didn\u2019t.\u201d Elsewhere he added, \u201cTrump was peanuts by comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also argued that Biden\u2019s conduct was worse as a former vice president because \u201che\u2019s not under the Presidential Records Act,\u201d even though the statute applies equally to presidents and vice presidents.<\/p>\n
For his part, Biden also misrepresented some of the facts of the case while addressing Hur\u2019s report in a Thursday news conference. He claimed \u201call\u201d classified records at his home were in lockable filing cabinets, despite a photo showing an open box in the garage that contained a classified document. He also falsely said \u201cnone of it was high classified\u201d; Hur said multiple documents were top-secret sensitive compartmented information.<\/p>\n
As Trump closes in on the Republican presidential nomination with wins in the first three nominating contests and a commanding polling lead in South Carolina\u2019s primary later this month, he has made the total 91 charges against him core to his campaign message. Trump portrays the four separate criminal cases as a politically motivated and centrally coordinated attack on his candidacy. Two of the cases were brought by Smith, acting independently of the White House according to Justice Department rules. The other two were brought by district attorneys, and there is no evidence of collaboration with Biden.<\/p>\n
In repeating that accusation Friday, Trump said he doubted Biden was personally involved, turning it into an attack on Biden\u2019s acuity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s Biden because I don\u2019t think he knows he\u2019s alive,\u201d Trump said, repeating a phrase he has used to criticize Biden before.<\/p>\n
Trump did not mention passages of Hur\u2019s report that gave a devastating impression of Biden\u2019s lucidity, describing the 81-year-old president has having \u201climited precision and recall,\u201d and \u201cstruggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, 77, often viciously insults Biden\u2019s intelligence and mocks his way of speaking and walking but strains to distinguish those attacks from being a function of age alone. He also showed sensitivity to questions about his own sharpness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you say one word a little bit mispronunciation, you end up front page, \u2018What\u2019s wrong with him?\u2019\u201d Trump said Friday. \u201cI have a guy I\u2019m competing against who doesn\u2019t \u2014 he hasn\u2019t spoken in months, and when he does, it\u2019s not pretty, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump did say Biden\u2019s retention of some classified material occurred years ago, \u201cwhen he was mentally a little better than he is right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in Friday evening\u2019s speech, Trump called it a \u201cnice Saturday afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Republican front-runner Donald Trump said the charges accusing him of mishandling classified documents should be dropped now that a special counsel investigation declined to charge President Biden, mischaracterizing the alleged conduct underlying both cases. \u201cIf he\u2019s not going to be charged, that\u2019s up to them,\u201d Trump said in a speech Friday to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}