Former US president Donald Trump has ramped up his calls for his Republican rivals to drop out of the 2024 presidential race during a rally in Pennsylvania.
He called on primary Republican members of Congress to focus on investigating US president Joe Biden and urged them to halt Ukrainian military aid until the White House co-operates with their investigations into Mr Biden and his family.
Mr Trump said: “Every dollar spent attacking me by Republicans is a dollar given straight to the Biden campaign.”
The former president and party frontrunner said it was time for Florida governor Ron DeSantis and others he dismissed as “clowns” to clear the field, accusing them of “wasting hundreds of millions of dollars that Republicans should be using to build a massive vote-gathering operation” to take on Mr Biden in November.
The comments came two days after federal prosecutors unveiled new criminal charges against Mr Trump as part of the case that accuses him of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and refusing to turn them over to investigators.
The superseding indictment unsealed on Thursday alleges that Mr Trump and two staffers sought to delete surveillance at the club in an effort to obstruct the Justice Department’s investigation.
The case is just one of Mr Trump’s mounting legal challenges. His team is currently bracing for additional possible indictments, which could happen as soon as this coming week, related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election brought by prosecutors in both Washington and Georgia.
Mr Trump already faces criminal charges in New York over hush money payments made to women who accused him of sexual encounters during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr Trump has embraced his legal woes, turning them into the core message of his bid to return to the White House as he accuses Mr Biden of using the Justice Department to maim his chief political rival.
The White House has said repeatedly that the president has had no involvement in the cases.
At rallies — including Saturday’s — Mr Trump has tried to frame the charges, which come with serious threats of jail time, as an attack not just on him, but those who support him.
“They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he told the gathered crowd.
“Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honour… because I’m being indicted for you.”
Mr Trump also threatened Republicans in Congress who refuse to go along with efforts to impeach Mr Biden.
House speaker Kevin McCarthy said this past week that Republicans may consider an impeachment inquiry into the president over unproven claims of financial misconduct.
Mr Trump said: “The biggest complaint that I get is that the Republicans find out this information and then they do nothing about it.
“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaries and get out.
“They have to play tough and… if they’re not willing to do it, we got a lot of good, tough Republicans around… and they’re going to get my endorsement every single time.”
At the rally, Mr Trump also called on Republican members of Congress to halt the authorisation of additional military support to Ukraine, which has been mired in a war fighting Russia’s invasion, until the Biden administration co-operates with Republican investigations into Mr Biden and his family’s business dealings.
“He’s dragging into a global conflict on behalf of the very same country, Ukraine, that apparently paid his family all of these millions of dollars,” Mr Trump alleged.
“In light of this information (Congress) should refuse to authorise a single additional payment of our depleted stockpiles… the weapons stockpiles to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family’s corrupt business dealings.”
House Republicans have been investigating the Biden family’s finances, particularly payments Hunter, the president’s son, received from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that became tangled in the first impeachment of Mr Trump.
