‘Made up mind’: Donald Trump makes a call on 2024 US presidential run
Donald Trump has pulled out a card he once claimed innocent people did not need and reportedly made a call on whether or not he will run for president in 2024.
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Former US President Donald Trump has declined to answer questions under oath in New York over alleged fraud at his family business, after his house was raided by the FBI just two days ago in relation to another legal matter.
Mr Trump issued a statement Wednesday local time saying he had done nothing wrong but was invoking the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.
The Fifth Amendment is a part of the US constitution that establishes a number of rights related to legal proceedings, including that no one “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” But it has come to apply in civil cases as well, to both witnesses and defendants.
Mr Trump said he had “no choice” but to plead the Fifth - despite repeatedly suggesting in the past that it was something an innocent person would never do - during a deposition at the New York attorney general’s office.
If Donald Trump pleads the Fifth, don't let him forget all of this pic.twitter.com/jL2YC50DpW
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 7, 2018
In a statement released after the deposition started, Mr Trump said, “I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution,” adding he took the advice from his legal counsel.
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” he continued.
“When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”
The deposition follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation search earlier this week on Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, signalling an escalation of legal probes into the 45th president.
Mr Trump took aim at the search in his statement on Wednesday local time, saying, “The current Administration and many prosecutors in this Country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.”
He arrived early on Wednesday in a convoy of cars guarded by the secret service at the offices of New York Attorney-General Letitia James, whose investigation is one of several active probes into the brash billionaire’s business practices and other actions.
Ms James suspects the Trump Organisation of fraudulently overstating the value of real estate properties when applying for bank loans, while understating them with tax authorities to pay less in taxes.
If Ms James, a Democrat, finds any evidence of financial misconduct, she can sue the Trump Organisation for damages but cannot file criminal charges, as it is a civil investigation.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, is running a parallel probe into the Trump Organisation that does have the potential for criminal charges. That investigation could be a reason Mr Trump’s legal team advised him to remain silent, as his deposition could energise the case.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump remains “very upbeat” and “fired up” despite his legal battles and the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago — and has “made up his mind” about running in 2024, according to a high-ranking politician who met him late on Tuesday.
Rep. Jim Banks was one of nearly a dozen members of the House Republican Study Committee who met Mr Trump, 76, just a day after the shocking raid on his Florida estate.
“He didn’t seem defeated in the least bit — he was very fired up, very upbeat,” Mr Banks told Fox News of the “great three-hour-long” chat at Mr Trump’s New Jersey golf club, Bedminister.
The former commander-in-chief told the group he “has made up his mind” about his long-teased run, and “enjoyed encouragement” from them to “get the decision out sooner rather than later.”
House conservatives are united in standing with President Trump.
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) August 10, 2022
We will Make America Great Again! @RepublicanStudypic.twitter.com/ZkcC7kqCHi
“He said we are going to like his decision and it is only a matter of time before he will make that decision known,” Mr Banks told Fox News of Mr Trump, who hours earlier released a campaign-style video promising that “the best is yet to come.”
“The Republican Party is bigger and stronger than ever before because of Donald Trump’s leadership,” insisted the study committee chairman.
Mr Banks joined others in saying that “what happened at Mar-a-Lago unifies Republicans in our outrage.”
“If anything, what the left and the corrupt Biden administration has done will only backfire on them, as they see that the American people stand with President Trump,” he told Fox.
“The House GOP is fighting back. We stand united in outrage against the Biden White House and DOJ, and we stand with President Trump.
Mr Trump left Bedminister later Tuesday and headed back to Trump Tower in the city ahead of being grilled by New York prosecutors in what he called “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in US history!
“My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides. Banana Republic!” he wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, according to the NY Post.
WHY FBI RAIDED TRUMP’S FLORIDA MANSION
Mr Trump has accused FBI agents of “planting” evidence during their search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, alleging that federal authorities would not let his legal team observe the activity.
“The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago,” Mr Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’
‘Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out? Obama and clinton were never ‘raided,’ despite big disputes!.”
FBI agents were authorised to conduct a search of the former US president’s palatial Florida residence, potentially looking for “something specific”.
US media outlets said agents were conducting a court-authorised search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago after Mr Trump left the White House in January 2021.
Mr Trump has also faced intense legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
Since leaving office, Mr Trump has remained the country’s most divisive figure, continuing to sow falsehoods that he actually won the 2020 vote.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is led by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, declined to provide a reason for the raid.
In his statement, Mr Trump did not give any indication about why the FBI raided his home but said: “They even broke into my safe!”
Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, told CNN that agents may have been looking for “something specific” related to the probe into the handling of classified information.
The National Archives said in February that it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago and asked the Justice Department to look into Trump’s handling of classified material.
The recovery of the boxes raised questions about Mr Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records.
‘DARK DAY’: SUPPORTERS RALLY BEHIND TRUMP
Top Republican leaders have flung their support behind former US president Donald Trump after the FBI raid sparked a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country.
The FBI move marked a stunning escalation of legal probes into the 45th president and comes as he is weighing another White House run.
Several former advisors to the 76-year-old Mr Trump urged him to immediately confirm that he would be a presidential candidate in 2024.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Mr Trump said of the FBI operation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach.
He denounced the FBI raid as a “weaponisation of the Justice System” by “Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
At the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden did not have any advance notice about the raid and respected the independence of the Justice Department.
Asked about the potential for civil unrest in reaction to Mr Trump’s legal problems, Jean-Pierre said “there’s no place for political violence in this country.”
Leading Republicans have rallied around the former president, who was not present at Mar-a-Lago when the raid took place.
Mr Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, expressed “deep concern” and said the raid smacked of “partisanship” by the Justice Department.
Kevin McCarthy, who is seeking to become speaker of the House of Representatives if Republicans win November’s midterm elections, accused the Justice Department of “weaponized politicisation.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said “launching an investigation of a former president this close to an election is beyond problematic.”
Representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, called it a “dark day in American history.”
“If the FBI can raid a US President, imagine what they can do to you,” Ms Stefanik tweeted, to which Democratic Representative Ted Lieu replied: “Why can’t the FBI investigate a US President? We’re not Russia, where the law doesn’t apply to the head of state and his cronies.”
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, told NBC that “no person is above the law.”
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo took to Twitter saying the Department of Justice “must immediate explain the reason for it’s raid”.
DOJ must disclose the bona fide nature of the August 8 action or else the republicans will use it to Discredit the Jan 6 investigation, which would be a terrible disservice to the good work of the house committee in exposing The Trump administration violations. https://t.co/KQ8AIK3DAJ
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) August 9, 2022
Mr Cuomo’s comment sparked several replies including from progressive author Keith Boykin: “Andrew Cuomo is wrong. DOJ doesn’t have to explain anything”, the New York Post reports.
“They never announced they searched Mar-a-Lago. Trump did. He’s the one who politicized (sic) it by (a) stealing documents, (b) refusing to return the documents, and (c) pretending to be the victim after he broke the law.”
Mr Trump’s former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN the raid could fire up his supporters, a small number of whom rallied outside Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.
“If it’s seen as some sort of massive overreach and not something incredibly serious, this is a very good day for Donald Trump,” Farah Griffin said.
For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol and Mr Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Attorney-General Merrick Garland has been repeatedly pushed over whether the Justice Department is building a case against Trump over the Capitol riot.
Mr Trump is also being investigated for his efforts to alter the 2020 voting results in the state of Georgia, while his business practices are being probed in New York in separate cases.
TRUMP RAID LINKED TO JUDGE WITH TIES TO EPSTEIN
The federal judge who authorised the FBI raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was reportedly once a prosecutor who left the US Attorney’s office to defend employees of Jeffrey Epstein.
Florida magistrate Bruce Reinhart signed the warrant that gave federal agents legal access to Trump’s property, according to anonymous sources quoted by The New York Post.
Mr Reinhardt was elevated to the position of a magistrate judge in March 2018 after 10 years in private practice, in which he was said to have represented several Epstein employees.
He had worked as an US Assistant lawyer for the Southern District of Florida before resigning on New Year’s Day in 2008 and going on to work with Epstein’s associates the next day, according to The Miami Herald.
After he was elevated to the bench in 2018, The Herald reported that he had been named in a civil lawsuit that accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides in the middle of the Epstein investigation.
Mr Reinhardt denied any wrongdoing in a 2011 affidavit in which he said he wasn’t involved in the federal investigation of Epstein.
He added to the Herald in 2018 that he represented Epstein’s pilots, scheduler Sarah Kellen, and Nadia Marcinkova. Marcinkova was once described by Epstein as his “Yugoslavian sex slave”, the Post reported.
Kellen and Marcinkova were granted immunity as part of Epstein’s 2007 deal to plead guilty to state, rather than federal, charges to serve 13 months with work release.
Epstein was found dead in 2019 while awaiting trial on further sex-trafficking charges.
The dramatic FBI raid on Mr Trump’s South Florida resort unleashed a political firestorm in the US and marked a stunning escalation of legal probes into the former president.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” the 76-year-old Trump said of the day-long FBI search of his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort.
He denounced the FBI raid as “prosecutorial misconduct” and “weaponisation of the Justice System” by “Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
The FBI declined to provide a reason for the unprecedented move against a former chief executive.
In response to the raid, Mr Trump’s supporters have urged him to accelerate the announcement of a 2024 presidential run.
TRUMP’S FURY AS FBI BREAKS INTO SAFE
Donald Trump said that his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was being “raided” by FBI agents in what he called an act of “prosecutorial misconduct.”
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” he said in a statement posted on his Truth Social network.
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponisation of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,” he added.
“They even broke into my safe!”
The FBI declined to comment on whether the search was happening or what it might be for, nor did Trump give any indication of why federal agents were at his home.
But multiple US media outlets cited sources close to the investigation as saying that agents were conducting a court-authorised search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago.
The National Archives said in February it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Mr Trump’s Florida estate, which the Washington Post reported included highly classified texts, taken with him when he left Washington following his re-election defeat.
The documents and mementos – which also included correspondence from ex-US president Barack Obama – should by law have been turned over at the end of Mr Trump’s presidency but instead ended up at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The recovery of the boxes raised questions about Mr Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records related to administration activity.
The Archives had requested then that the Justice Department open a probe into Mr Trump’s practices.
White House staff also regularly discovered wads of paper clogging toilets, leading them to believe Trump was trying to get rid of certain documents, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
Since taking his last Air Force One flight from Washington to Florida on January 20 last year, Trump has remained the country’s most polarising figure, continuing his unprecedented campaign to sow falsehoods that he actually won the 2020 election.
For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters and his attempts to overturn the election.
The US Department of Justice is also investigating the January 6 attack.
While Attorney-General Merrick Garland has declined to comment on growing speculation that Mr Trump could face criminal charges, he has insisted that “no person is above the law” and that he intends to “hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election.”
Mr Trump is also being investigated for his efforts to alter the 2020 voting results in the state of Georgia, while his business practices are being probed in New York in separate cases, one civil and the other criminal.
The real estate mogul has not yet officially declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, though he has dropped strong hints over the past few months.
With President Joe Biden’s approval rating currently below 40 per cent and Democrats forecast to lose control of Congress in November midterm elections, Mr Trump is apparently bullish that he could ride the Republican wave all the way to the White House in 2024.
TRUMP INDICATES FUTURE PRESIDENTIAL RUN
The FBI “raid” comes after Mr Trump gave the strongest indication yet that he will run for president in 2024 teasing an announcement “in the not too distant future”.
The former US president hinted on multiple occasions recently that he may seek the Republican party’s nomination in 2024.
Asked when he would make a formal announcement at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, Mr Trump answered “the time is coming”.
He continued: “I think people are going to be very happy, our country has never been in a position like this, we’ve lost everything,” Fox News reports.
The 76-year-old, who served as the 45th US president from 2017-2021, argued America’s “prestige” was damaged by Democrat President Joe Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Our country has never been at a worse point,” Mr Trump said.
“They gave away $85 billion worth of equipment, dead soldiers, you still have Americans over there probably as hostages, eventually will be hostages, there has never been a time like this.”
He then teased he will reveal his decision soon: “We’ll be making an announcement in the not too distant future.”
A straw poll by the CPAC found Mr Trump is favourite for the 2024 GOP nomination, garnering 70 per cent of vote at the conference compared to 23.7 per cent for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Republican Party announced on Friday that it will hold its 2024 presidential nominating convention in Wisconsin, a state narrowly won by Mr Biden in 2020.
The Republican National Committee said the convention will take place in Milwaukee, the largest city in the northern swing state.
The Republican and Democratic parties traditionally hold a huge convention several months before the November election to officially name their presidential nominees.
The RNC did not set a date for the Milwaukee convention but it is expected to be held in July or August 2024.
The Democratic Party has not yet decided on the site for its 2024 convention but has narrowed down the choice to Atlanta, Chicago, Houston or New York.
– additional reporting AFP
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