Trump Responds to Charges In Speech Following Arraignment In Federal Court Transcript

USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. It’s a great honor to have you here. And today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abusive power in the history of our country, a very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a presidential election in which he’s losing very badly. This is called election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election. But more importantly, it’s a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or a communist nation. This day will go down an infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy. But they will fail and we will win bigger and better than ever before.

(01:25)
Charging a former president of the United States under the Espionage Act of 1917 wasn’t meant for this, an act for a crime so heinous that only the death penalty would do. And threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law. The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents.

(02:08)
As president, the law that applies to this case is not the Espionage Act, but very simply the Presidential Records Act, which is not even mentioned in this ridiculous 44-page indictment. Under the Presidential Records Act, which is civil, not criminal, I had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on the subject known as the Clinton socks case. You know what that means?

(02:45)
After leaving the White House, Bill Clinton kept 79 audio tapes in his sock drawer. They included discussions of US military involvement in Haiti, discussions of US foreign policy, both defense and offense, against Cuba, recordings of President Clinton’s conversations with all of the many foreign leaders at the time, think of that, sensitive facts about trade negotiations taken from presidential briefings, discussions with the Secretary of State about conflict in Bosnia and much, much more, very big stuff.

(03:25)
Not only was Bill Clinton never even considered for criminal prosecution based on the tapes he took, but when he was sued for them, he won the case. Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, “The decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term, and in the president’s sole discretion.” You’re surprised to hear that aren’t you?

(04:06)
Any normal administration, even an opposing one, would consider that to be the end, but not the corrupt Biden administration. The socks decision, as it’s known, also states, “The National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, does not have the authority to designate material as presidential records.” I don’t have the authority. NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right duty or means to seize control of them. This is law. The president enjoys unconstrained authority to make decisions regarding the disposal of documents, that’s unconstrained, to make that decision. Neither the archivist nor Congress has the authority to veto the President’s decision.

(04:59)
The Presidential Records Act does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the president of the United States. Think of that. That’s the decision. Think of that. Now, just think of that. In other words, whatever documents a president decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It’s an absolute right. This is the law. And that is something that people have now seen and it couldn’t be more clear. They ought to drop this case immediately because they’re destroying a country.

(05:50)
And this is why no other president, even those who kept far more documents than I, has ever been even investigated, let alone charged with a crime, because the sham indictment put forward by the Biden administration included staged photographs of boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Many people have asked me why I had these boxes. “Why did you want them?”

(06:17)
The answer, in addition to having every right under the Presidential Records Act, is that these boxes were containing all types of personal belongings, many, many things: shirts and shoes and everything. As can be seen in the picture where someone, not me, I wonder who it might have been, dumped one of the very neatly arranged boxes all over the floor, they were full of newspapers, press clippings, thousands of pictures, thousands and thousands of White House pictures. The White House photographers, some are with us today. They took so many pictures and we saved all of them and they were in those boxes, clothing, memorabilia, and much, much more. I hadn’t had a chance to go through all the boxes. It’s a long, tedious job. It takes a long time, which I was prepared to do, but I have a very busy life. I’ve had a very busy life. They make it more busy because you’re always fighting. And under the socks decision, there seemed to be no rush. I wasn’t in a rush because that decision was law.

(07:28)
The other picture that was so vile, you remember that one, it was angry and corrupt, was the photo staged by the FBI. And those that rated Mar-a-Lago, they were putting documents all over the floor. Remember that famous picture? All over, said “confidential,” said “presidential,” said all sorts of things. And it was supposed to be there like it was that way when they raided. It wasn’t that way; they put them there, took the picture, and released it illegally to the press. They took my medical records, my passport, my birth certificate, and apologized. They even brought a safe cracker. This is a professional safe cracker they brought into Mar-a-Lago, and they broke into my safe. And you know what they found? Nothing. There was nothing there, nothing there, zero.

(08:22)
According to the Presidential Records Act, which was a big deal, I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting FBI agents. I have security tapes of it. I gave them security tapes of everything, in a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the right against unreasonable search and seizure. And Sebastian, you covered very well, I must say, very well.

(09:00)
I’m not the one who thinks I’m above the law; I’m the one that followed the law. I’m the only one. It’s Joe Biden and his corrupt department of injustice who think they are above the law. Never before have the two standards of justice in our country been more starkly revealed. Joe Biden had troves of classified documents from his time as vice president and even as a senator, which was completely and totally illegal. In fact, other senators heard about it. Dick Durbin heard about it. You have to see his response, “There’s no way. That’s totally illegal.” Took them as a senator out of a skiff. They were shocked when they found out. They actually thought it was impossible to do.

(09:46)
Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware making the search very, very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up, and he refuses to let people even look at them. And then they say how he’s behaving so nicely. Many of Biden’s classified documents were in Chinatown, D.C., Chinatown, which is shocking considering his family received so much money from China. I wonder how many times the friends of ours from China reviewed those documents, Chinatown, D.C.

(10:23)
Others were unsecured at his so-called Penn Biden Center in Washington, which paid Biden approximately $1 million a year, the money supposedly coming from China. And still other classified documents were strewn all over his garage floor where his now famous Corvette is stored. He’s so proud of that car. There was no security, and the door was left open. Most of the time, it was open. All of those classified documents, all of those documents strewn all over the floor, piled up like junk; unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president.

(11:04)
Joe Biden, as vice president, had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right. Instead of falling under the Presidential Records Act, Biden’s actions fell under a much stricter Federal Records Act, which has very, very tough criminal penalties, yet nothing happens to crooked Joe. Nothing happened. Have you heard anything about the big search for his documents? No. Only me.

Boo.

Most and famously of all, Hillary Clinton set up an illegal private server in her basement, you never heard this story, with the deliberate intention of violating public information law so she could hide her pay-for-play scandals at the Clinton Foundations or whatever. Hillary stored vast quantities of classified and sensitive information on her illicit server. Some of it happened to leak; it leaked into Anthony Weiner’s computer, remember Anthony Weiner, into his computer. You don’t want to be on his computer. And all of it was illegal because thankfully she was never president. She didn’t have the powers to declassify. Thank you, thank you. She didn’t have the powers to declassify. It’s a big difference. And neither did Joe, Joe didn’t have… Do you mind? Have a drink. It’s a little bit cooler than it was, but it’s pretty hot out here.

Happy Birthday to you, Mr. President.

Thank you. “Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday,” great birthday. Nice birthday, isn’t it?

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Mr. President, happy birthday to you.

Nice birthday, wonderful birthday. They were saying, “Happy Birthday.” I was with Eric and Laura, and the kids, “Happy Birthday, Grandpa.” And I said, “Oh, great. I just got charged with, they want 400 years approximately. If you add them all up, a fake 400 years. Oh, thank you darling. That’s so nice. It’s a wonderful birthday.” But we’re going to make it into the greatest birthday of all. We’ll make it into the greatest of all. I will.

(13:38)
When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid washed. Nobody does that because of the expense, but it’s pretty conclusive, 33,000 emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there and she decided to delete, acid wash, and then smash and destroy her cell phones with a hammer. And then they say, I participated in obstruction? No, think of it. That’s called obstruction. There’s never been obstruction as grave as that.

(14:14)
She did this in the face of everything, and yet nobody did anything about it. The FBI and the DOJ protected her, did not issue subpoenas, did not use a grand jury, did not execute search warrants. And then, the corrupt head of the FBI, James Comey, declared, “No reasonable prosecutor would bring a case.” Can you believe it?

Boo. Boo.

And that was just one of many items. Hillary Clinton broke the law and she didn’t get indicted. Joe Biden broke the law, and in many other ways we’re finding out, and so far has not gotten indicted. I did everything right and they indicted me. But you know, we’re serving as a great example. In the case of Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor, remember that, Sandy Berger, he was caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives, very big ones, very important ones, by stuffing them in his pants, that’s pretty, and putting them also in his socks. And he destroyed them and cut the tape with scissors, cut them all up. What Berger did was highly illegal, but he was given nothing, no jail time, nothing. Nothing happened.

(15:36)
There are countless other examples. Bill Clinton, who I happened to like, hard to believe, right? Before I did this, I was actually quite friendly with him, nice guy. They should have used him a little bit more as an advisor on the 2016 election. He said, “You’d better get to Wisconsin. You’re going to lose.” “No, we’re not.” “You’d better get to Michigan. You’re going to lose.” “No, we’re not.” They did. Bill Clinton lost the nuclear codes, and absolutely nothing was done about it. He’d lost the nuclear codes.

(16:09)
The George W. Bush White House lost 22 million emails, a record. NARA cannot assure a complete transfer of any of the Bush records. A document shredding truck was spotted on the way to Dick Cheney’s house. Can you imagine? Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture, china, flatware, rugs, and more from the White House and she wasn’t prosecuted. How about that one? She took the furniture and the china. How about if Trump did that? Do you think Trump would have a little problem?

(16:48)
The horrific violations of my rights by crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized department of injustice are unthinkable. It’s unthinkable what’s happened, so bad for our country. Democrats all, they lawlessly pierced my attorney/client privilege with lawyers; what they did to lawyers, what they have done to our lawyers, our lawyers, all of our lawyers. They’ve done things that were absolutely horrible and unthinkable. The leaking has been unbelievable and highly illegal. They leak. We’ve learned more about from the Washington Post, New York Times, about the DOJ’s boxes hoax, it’s a boxes hoax, than from prosecutors themselves. We want to read about it. You pick up the Washington Post, which is not doing well, or you pick up The New York Times, but they’ll do better now because of these things. This is the only way they survive. But they’ll end up dying.

(17:46)
But it’s not supposed to be that way. We don’t want to learn from The Times. We don’t want to learn from leaks. We want to learn from the people we’re supposed to learn from. It’s like a leaking sieve in Washington. But we learn nothing about the Biden bribery scheme or special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation. Robert Hur is doing the Biden investigation. He’s a very respected, very nice person, very nice person. Mine’s not such a nice person. Mine’s a deranged lunatic, which are many times the magnitude of ours in both number and severity. That’s the prosecutor that they gave. He has found nothing. He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I’m happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents in his house, but they exonerated him. And Biden is a different story, so much. You have to really think about what I said. As a senator, he took all of those documents. It’s unprecedented.

(18:50)
The prosecutor in the case, I will call it our case, is a thug. I’ve named him deranged Jack Smith. I wonder what his name used to be. Jack Smith, it sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? Jack Smith. “What’s his name? Jack Smith. He’s a very nice man.” He’s a behind the scenes guy, but his record is absolutely atrocious. He does political hit jobs. He’s been known to viciously arrest a certain governor. You know the governor, Bob McDonald of Virginia, and absolutely ruined his life and the life of his family, all these wonderful family members, I knew them, only to have the case overturned 8-0 by the Supreme Court. He destroyed that man and he destroyed that family.

(19:40)
And by the way, I will tell you I’m here, and I love you all and we can take it.

We love you. We love you.

But what these thugs have done to my family is a disgrace. I will tell you that. I say it to all of the fake news because there’s a lot of it back there.

Boo. Boo, news.

What they did to my family and that young man right there.

Horrible.

He’s answered more subpoenas than any human being in the history of the world. And you know what? They have nothing, after all of those subpoenas, literally thousands of them. Congress, fake counsels, Mueller report, all of this, all he did is answer subpoenas all the time. At least he’s become very experienced at that. Congratulations.

We love your family.

But Eric is fantastic, and what he and Don and Ivanka and the whole group, that’s what they’ve gone through. And these are serious people. These are serious people. But what he’s done to my family, what they have done to my family, is horrible.

(20:48)
He also tried to railroad John Edwards on a completely bogus legal theory that didn’t hold up in court. It’s no wonder this raging lunatic was shipped off to the Hague to prosecute war criminals using globalist tribunals, not beholden to the Constitution or the rule of law, two things Jack Smith clearly disdains. You take a look at this guy, he looks like a thug. But then I watched him make a speech the other day and he was trembling, because it wasn’t his territory. He feels much safer in the inner sanctums of the department of injustice where he can be in his room and scream at people.

(21:27)
He’s a raging and uncontrolled Trump hater, as is his wife, who also happened to be the producer of that Michelle Obama puff piece. It was a total puff piece. This is the guy I’ve got. Don’t forget, this persecution is being done by the same weaponized agencies that for seven years have been running illegal psychological warfare campaigns against the American people, much as if they were trying to destabilize a foreign country from the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax to the no collusion Mueller witch hunt, to impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, the 51 lying intelligence offers. How about them? They said, “It’s Russia disinformation” and they knew it wasn’t, which made about, according to some of the great pollsters that are right here, made from anywhere from a 10-17 point difference. And yet, we still got more votes than any sitting president in history in the second election.

(22:27)
And we actually did much better in the second election than we did in the first election. The fake dossier paid for by the Democrats. How about the fake dossier? Remember that one? You think that was easy to go home and say, “Hello darling, how are you?” when they read about that? It wasn’t easy at all. Spying on my campaign, we caught them spying on my campaign, the FBI Twitter files and so much more, it’s all been a battle of disinformation, one thing after the other. And all to protect the radical left misfits.

(23:09)
It’s also no coincidence that these charges against me came down the very same day evidence revealed Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine, took a $5 million bribe. But the FBI and the Justice Department don’t even want to talk about it. They showed something on television tonight. It had zero time on the three major networks, zero. But my impeachment had almost all the time. I think I had 351 minutes, they had no minutes. Okay?

I’ll vote for you.

I think a lot of people are going to vote. Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to vote. I will tell you, I just left Miami and I’ve never seen love in the streets like that. I’ve never seen it. We’ve seen a lot of love. I’ve never seen love like that, because they know. They know what we all go through. They know what we’ve gone through, and they see it and they’re smart. And many of those people coming from Cuba, Venezuela, other countries, they’ve seen this happening to their countries.

(24:11)
I used to say that the United States, if it keeps going this way, it’s going to be Venezuela on steroids. And now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. Can you believe it? We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other nation, but we’re buying tar from Venezuela and we’re refining it in Houston. The dirtiest, worst oil probably anywhere in the world, and we’re refining it, so you can imagine what’s going up in the air. And our beautiful stuff, we’re not taking out of the ground and making a lot of money and paying off debt and reducing taxes still further, which we were in the process of doing.

(24:47)
They want to distract from the real espionage and the real crime, so, “Let’s use President Trump to do so. Let’s go out and let’s indict President Trump so they don’t talk about the $5 million bribe.” Just yesterday, Senator Grassley revealed that the Burisma executive who allegedly paid the bribe reportedly has crooked Joe on tape. They have 17 tapes, I understand. He must be a nice guy to deal with, right? The guy from Burisma, nice company, they got him and Hunter on 17 different tapes supposedly, but the FBI isn’t showing them. Remember they impeached me for asking a simple question about Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine. And now they see that once again, I was right. I was right. I was totally right. Joe Biden and the radical left can take foreign bribes and be totally protected.

(25:42)
Republicans all, you must finally get tough. You’ve got to get tough. You’ve got to get tough and you’ve got to show them when you arrest your leading political opponent, we no longer have a democracy. When people are allowed to pour through our open borders and our elections are rigged, our country is in very serious trouble. When inflation is allowed to rage, when energy independence and dominance, we had independence and dominance, we were going to be soon very, very dominant. Within six months we were going to dominate the whole world with energy, make a fortune. We were going to be paying off debt and lowering taxes at a level that nobody’s ever seen, and they came in and they ended it.

(26:24)
But when that’s taken away from us, when interest rates and taxes spiral upward in an uncontrolled way, when murders are allowed to roam, murderers, these are horrible killers, murderers are allowed to roam the streets of our Democrat-run cities unchecked, but the incompetent district attorney in New York indicts Trump for a crime that everybody agrees, every pundit, everybody, there is no crime.

There is no crime.

But murderers go out, and nobody ever even comes and knocks on their door. And they know they’re there, and they know their rooms and they know their locations, and they’re roaming our cities all over. And some of them are coming in right now through our borders. But then, you have a nation that as we are, is in serious, serious decline. We have a nation in serious decline.

That’s why we’re here.

If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates, which they do. We must end it permanently and we must end it immediately. Now that the seal, so important, is broken, the seal is broken by what they’ve done. They should never have done this. This was an unwritten rule. You just don’t, unless it’s really bad; but you just don’t. But the seal is now broken.

(27:50)
In addition to closing the border and removing all of the criminal elements that have illegally invaded our country, making America energy independent and even dominant again, and immediately ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, I’ll have it ended in 24 hours, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president of the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family, name a special prosecutor.

Lock him up, lock him up.

And all others involved with the destruction of our elections, our borders, and our country itself. They’re destroying our country. And when I’m reelected, and we will get reelected. We have no choice. We’re not going to have a country anymore. I will totally obliterate the deep state. We will obliterate the deep state. And 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. It’s very simple. They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you. They want you silent. And I am the only one that can save this nation, because you know they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you. And I just happen to be standing in their way and I will never be moving. On November 5th, 2024, justice will be done. We will take back our country and we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you.