Trump says he had ‘every right’ to interfere in election

Former President Trump in an interview broadcast late Sunday argued he had “every right” to interfere with the 2020 election while repeating his claim the criminal election interference cases against him are politically motivated.

“It’s so crazy, that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up. When people get indicted your poll numbers go down,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Life, Liberty and Levin.”

Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was responding to a suggestion from host and lawyer Mark Levin that President Biden or Vice President Harris could have told the attorney general to “knock it off,” in reference to the federal election interference case.

The former president faces federal charges in Washington for his alleged actions to subvert the 2020 election results. He is separately charged in Georgia with racketeering and other state counts over an alleged scheme to overturn the state’s election results.

“Well, this is the worst case of election interference that anyone’s ever seen, certainly in our country,” Trump said during the Fox News interview. “They do this in Third World countries, they have some of it in South America, they don’t do it a lot, believe it or not. But they do it.”

“And it’s such a bad precedent because people are going to think about it differently, and they’re going to think about it differently. And it’s very sad, actually,” he added.

He went on to argue those prosecuting the cases against him are politically biased against him.

“They put people in the DA’s office,” Trump said. “This was all coming out of the Department of Justice in order to get their political opponent — me.”

Trump also said Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis “came up with this crazy scheme and a lot of people were hurt,” in reference to the co-defendants charged alongside him in Georgia.

The remarks come days after special counsel Jack Smith last week filed a superseding indictment in the federal election subversion case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark immunity ruling in July.

The nation’s high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity for actions that fall within the core responsibilities of their office and are “at least presumptively immune” for all other official acts. Trump has repeatedly claimed he should be immune from the charges as a result.

The ruling sent the case back to a lower court to reconsider whether Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, merit special protection from criminal prosecution. Smith presented the case to a second grand jury, which had not previously heard the matter. It likewise concluded the charges were warranted against the president.

The Harris campaign ripped Trump for the remarks. 

“Everything Donald Trump has promised on the campaign trail – from ‘terminating’ the Constitution, to imprisoning his political opponents and promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’ – makes it clear that he believes he is above the law. Now, Trump is claiming he had ‘every right’ to interfere in the 2020 election. He did not,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitka said in a statement Monday. 

“While Donald Trump is pushing his false history about the past, the American people are ready for a new way forward,” she added. “They know Vice President Harris is the tough-as-nails prosecutor we need to turn the page on chaos, fear, and division, and uphold the rule of law.”

Updated at 3:31 p.m. EDT