Former President Donald Trump on Saturday told his supporters he hopes there will be massive nationwide protests if prosecutors investigating him and his businesses “do anything illegal.”
Speaking during a rally in Conroe, Texas, Trump also accused prosecutors of being “racist” and maintained his innocence amid multiple probes into his private business dealings and actions while he was president.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt,” Trump said during the rally on Saturday night.
After ranting about the prosecutors investigating him, Trump calls the prosecutors racist and says if they do anything illegal, he hopes there are massive protests in DC, New York, and Atlanta pic.twitter.com/RnY6F5OJNv
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2022
“In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be the person in the way,” Trump later added.
Trump has been the subject of numerous investigations since he left office. Among them, includes an investigation by the House select committee probing whether or not the former president or his allies committed crimes when hundreds of his supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop President Joe Biden‘s election certification on January 6, 2021.
Investigators have so far issued dozens of subpoenas or requested voluntary testimonies from Trump’s closest allies and family members, including Rudy Giuliani and Ivanka Trump. Trump has repeatedly downplayed the violence at the Capitol and denies he incited the riot, despite urging his supporter to “fight like hell” just before the insurrection began.
Trump is also facing years-long investigations into his private businesses by New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Earlier this month, James announced that her office has uncovered “significant” evidence to suggest the Trump Organization committed fraud.
The former president also faces a “substantial risk” of prosecution in Georgia for his attempts to sway the state’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to help him win the 2020 presidential election.
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“For years, they’ve been going after my company, many years, using every trick in the book in an attempt to literally–if they can–put me in jail. They want to put me in jail,” Trump told his supporters during the Saturday rally. Trump also accused investigators of committing “prosecutorial misconduct at the highest level” and accused them of being vicious, racist and “mentally sick.”
“They’re going after me without any protection of my rights by the Supreme Court or most other courts,” he added.
Trump has repeatedly appealed to the Supreme Court in order to block investigators from obtaining crucial documents and records that may aid their probes.
However, this month Trump was dealt a significant blow when the court ordered that hundreds of pages of personal presidential records–including diaries and phone logs– would be turned over to the January 6 House select committee.
“Reviewing documents that former President Trump sought to hide from the American people is essential to understanding the events leading up to and during the deadly insurrection and its aftermath, and to ensuring it never happens again,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the decision.
