Donald Trump on Thursday said he “can’t imagine being indicted” for stealing classified documents or a scheme to put forward alternate electors that would keep him in power after losing the 2020 election, but warned that if criminal charges are filed against him the US will face “big problems like we’ve never seen before” in an allusion to violence similar to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it,” Trump said of a potential indictment during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Business Insider reports.
“I think you’d have big problems in this country the likes of which perhaps, we’ve never seen before,” he added before insisting that he did nothing wrong in his handling of classified documents after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate last month.
The agency conducted the search months after it found dozens of classified documents at the residence and unsuccessfully tried to get the materials back from Trump.
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During the interview, Trump reasserted his claim that he had declassified all of the documents he kept at his home more than a year after leaving the White House, though experts have disputed he could do so without going through a more formal process.
“There is no reason that they can [indict], other than if they’re just sick and deranged, which is always possible, because I did absolutely … nothing wrong,” Trump told Hewitt.
The former president also added that an indictment against him is “no prohibition” on him running for president in 2024 and repeated that the the country will be “in a dangerous position” because the American public will accept him being indicted.
Hewitt, noting some would interpret his comments as inciting violence, asked what kind of problems he was referring to, though Trump did not specify.
“That’s not inciting, I’m just saying what my opinion is,” Trump said. “I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard Durbin (D-Illinois), denounced Trump’s latest remarks saying that they are “careless” and added that “inflammatory rhetoric has its consequences.”
Political scientists have warned that the US could see violence similar to the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol that left seven dead and more than 140 police officers injured.
“When you have politicians who are riling everyone up and law enforcement that is sort of wishy-washy or weak in its response, then I think you have a really volatile mix that emboldens these kinds of groups to continue with what they’re doing,”Carole Emberton, a history professor at the University at Buffalo who specializes in the American Civil War, said in a previous interview with Business Insider.
