President Joe Biden has hit out at his predecessor Donald Trump following his likely opponent in November’s election being convicted by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts related to hush money payments
Mr Biden said on Monday that “this campaign has entered uncharted territory”.
Speaking at a fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut, he said the former president “wants you to believe it’s all rigged. Nothing could be further from the truth”.
The President said: “It’s reckless and dangerous and downright irresponsible for anyone to say that it’s rigged just because you don’t like the verdict.”
He added that the justice system was a core of American democracy and “we should never allow anyone to tear it down”.
Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was convicted on all counts related to a scheme during his 2016 presidential campaign to pay off adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who said the two had sex.
The former president labelled the verdict politically motivated and has blamed it on Mr Biden while seeking to make himself a political martyr in the eyes of supporters, suggesting that if this could happen to him, similar things might befall them.
As he did last week, Mr Biden noted it was a state case rather than a federal one, was heard by a jury chosen the same way all juries nationwide are chosen and featured five weeks of evidence. He said the verdict was unanimous and Mr Trump can appeal.
But he went further on Monday, accusing the former president of equating the justice system and elections, saying he was “attacking both the judiciary and elections system as rigged”.
“Nothing could be more dangerous for the country, more dangerous for American democracy,” Mr Biden said.
The President made no mention of the federal gun case against his son Hunter, which began on Monday in Delaware.
Instead, he said: “Here’s what is becoming clearer and clearer every day: The threat Trump poses in his second term would be greater than it was in his first.
“This isn’t the same Trump that got elected in 2016. He’s worse.
He referenced a television ad his campaign has produced featuring another of his celebrity backers, actor Robert De Niro, narrating and asserting that Mr Trump “snapped” after losing the election in 2020.
“Something snapped in this guy — for real — when he lost in 2020,” Mr Biden said, suggesting the former president was “unhinged” and was the driving force behind a mob of his supporters overrunning the US Capitol on January 6 2021.
“He can’t accept the fact that he lost, it’s literally driving him crazy,” Mr Biden said.
Continuing his sharp criticism, he said the former president “wants to terminate the Constitution” and “says if he loses there will be a bloodbath in America”,
“What kind of man is this?” Mr Biden asked.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
