President Donald Trump has responded after his main rival in the 2024 presidential election weaponized the taxpayer-funded Department of Justice (DOJ) against him.
Trump fired back in response to Democrat President Joe Biden’s DOJ issuing a 7-count federal indictment against him.
In a new interview with Fox News, Trump said the move by the Biden administration is “election interference at the highest level.”
He also blasted the Biden admin as “the most corrupt” administration in America’s history.
Shortly after news broke of the indictment on Thursday night, Trump told Fox that the case is “election interference” and “the greatest witch hunt of all time.”
The 45th president is due to appear in federal court on Tuesday.
Trump said he will “of course” plead not guilty to charges and said he is “totally innocent.”
Trump is the current front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and is leading Biden in the polls.
He was indicted on federal charges Thursday evening stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s months-long investigation into Trump’s alleged improper retention of classified records at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump is listed in the indictment as a criminal defendant charged with at least seven counts involving obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and illegal retention of classified government material.
He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
The indictment remains unsealed.
“This is the most corrupt administration in history—there has never been an administration so corrupt, and they’re just starting to find it right now,” Trump told Fox.
“They are trying to deflect all of their dishonesty by bringing this ridiculous boxes hoax case.”
“They’re not going to get away with it,” he added.
“I did absolutely nothing wrong,” he said, citing the Presidential Records Act, saying it “makes me totally innocent.”
President Biden is under special counsel investigation for his alleged improper retention of classified records from his time as vice president in the Obama administration and as a senator.
When asked whether he thought Biden could, too, be charged, Trump said, “Probably not—nothing will happen.”
He said the indictment was handed down Thursday because it was the same day an allegation emerged that Biden received $5 million for involvement in a bribery scheme.
Hours before the indictment, Slay News reported that a confidential human source told the FBI during a June 2020 interview that President Biden was allegedly paid $5 million by an executive of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings.
While Biden was serving as Obama’s vice president, his son Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma and was paid tens of thousands of dollars per month, despite zero experience in the energy sector.
The contents of the subpoenaed FBI-generated FD-1023 form allege a criminal bribery scheme between then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national that involved influence over U.S. policy decisions.
“The reason that they did this today, at this time, is because of the fact that the $5 million was found out in the document, and that’s just the beginning,” Trump said.
The allegations in the FD-1023 form were an FBI interview with a “highly credible” confidential source.
The informant detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, starting in 2015.
The form has yet to be made public but it has been described by several sources who are aware of its contents.
Sources familiar told Fox that the confidential human source believes that the $5 million payment to Joe Biden and the $5 million payment to Hunter Biden occurred, based on his or her conversations with the Burisma executive.
The confidential source said the Burisma executive told him he “paid” the Bidens in such a manner “through so many different bank accounts” that investigators would not be able to “unravel this for at least 10 years.”
The document then makes reference to “the Big Guy,” which, has been said to be a reference to Joe Biden.
In emails and text messages from Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell,” an unidentified business partner called “the Big Guy” is referenced in conversations about diving up profits from shady foreign deals.
Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski later blew the whistle and identified Joe Biden as “The Big Guy.”
The Burisma executive told the confidential source that he “didn’t pay the Big Guy directly.”
According to the FBI document, the $5 million payments appeared to reference a kind of “retainer” Burisma intended to pay the Bidens to deal with a number of issues, including his effort to end the investigation into Burisma led by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Another source referred to the arrangement as a “pay-to-play” scheme.
Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly-lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month.
The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about investigations into the Biden family’s actions and business dealings in Ukraine.
They specifically discussed Hunter Biden’s ventures with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings and Joe Biden’s successful effort to have Shokin ousted.
Trump was later impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — all stemming from the phone call and the question about the Bidens’ dealings.
The Senate voted for acquittal in February 2020.
“I was asking the right question,” Trump said Thursday, referring to his July 2019 phone call with Zelenskyy.
“I said, if you have any corruption on the Biden administration, call our attorney general—I was doing my job—and it turns out, my job was done correctly.”
