The Biden campaign launched a battleground state ad Monday that lambastes former President Trump as a “convicted criminal,” highlighting his numerous legal problems and his recent felony conviction in New York.
The ad, titled “Character Matters,” will run on general market television across battleground states and on national cable. It is part of a broader $50 million paid media campaign for June and comes less than two weeks before the first debate between President Biden and Trump.
“In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud,” the narrator says in the 30-second ad while images of Trump in New York court play.
“Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been working, lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share. This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself, and a president who’s fighting for your family,” the ad concludes.
The ad marks one of the most aggressive efforts to date from the Biden campaign to attack Trump over his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records following a weeks-long trial in Manhattan.
It comes as Biden and Trump are set to face-off on June 27 for the first of two planned presidential debates. It will be hosted by CNN in Atlanta.
“Trump approaches the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to prove that he will do anything and harm anyone if it means more power and vengeance for Donald Trump,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director, in a statement.
“That’s why he was convicted, that’s why he encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol on January 6, and it’s why his entire campaign is an exercise in revenge and retribution; because that man is blind to the people a president should be serving and will do absolutely anything for his own personal gain and for his own power,” Tyler added.
Trump has railed against the legal system amid his numerous legal troubles, claiming they are being orchestrated by the Biden White House to hurt him politically ahead of November. There is no evidence the White House has played a role in the various cases against Trump.
In addition to the guilty verdict in New York, a jury found Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and later defamed her by denying her claims, and a New York judge ordered him to pay nearly $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case.
Trump is still facing criminal cases in Washington, D.C., Florida and Georgia, though none of those cases appear likely to go to trial before November.
President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was found guilty last week on three felony counts alleging he lied about his use of illicit drugs when obtaining a gun in 2018 and then unlawfully possessed the firearm for 11 days.
Trump’s campaign dismissed Hunter Biden’s conviction as “a distraction” from claims of corruption against the Biden family.