Former President Donald Trump reacted to the new bombshell charges against him with an unsigned statement from his campaign attacking Special Counsel Jack Smith and President Joe Biden with name-calling and a claim that numerous fact-checkers have found to be baseless.
News broke Thursday afternoon that Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed three additional charges against Trump. On Thursday evening, Trump’s presidential campaign emailed a statement to the media that featured familiar insults and the claim that the prosecutions against him are politically motivated and are being directed by the president:
Statement from the Trump CampaignThis is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him.Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.
Numerous outlets have fact-checked the claim Trump made and found it to be without merit, and CNN’s Jake Tapper
The new filing:
- charges Trump with one additional count of unlawful retention of National Defense Information
- adds a defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, to the obstruction conspiracy that was charged in Count 32 of the original indictment.
- charges defendants Trump, De Oliveira, and Waltine Nauta with two new obstruction counts: Counts 40 and 41. These additions are based on allegations that the defendants attempted to delete surveillance video footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club in the summer of 2022.
- adds a new Count 42 charging De Oliveira with false statements and representations in a voluntary interview with the FBI on January 13, 2023.
Trump has been re-posting video rants and sharing poll graphics on his Truth Social account since the news broke.