Former President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News‘ Mark Levin that he had “every right” to interfere with a presidential election.
The host of the Life, Liberty and Levin program talked about the Republican nominee’s ongoing legal concerns amid the 2024 campaign, including Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election subversion case.
Levin, a lawyer and longtime conservative commentator, said that President Joe Biden or Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris could tell the Attorney General to “knock it off” regarding the federal cases against Trump. He went on to ask, “this election interference never ends, does it?”
“Actually, but you know the good news 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 during the second part of a recorded interview that aired Sunday night.
Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the 2024 Joyful Warriors National Summit on August 30, 2024, in Washington, DC.
AFP/Getty Images
Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, faces four federal charges in the case into his alleged attempts to thwart the 2020 election results, which the former president has claimed was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud despite a lack of substantial evidence.
The charges include conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and alleges the case is politically motivated.
On Tuesday, Smith filed a revised indictment against Trump, which comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, but not for acts as a private citizen or candidate. Trump has argued his actions were official acts so he should not be prosecuted.
However, prosecutors allege he was acting as a private citizen for many of his alleged attempts at overturning the election results. In the latest indictment, Smith emphasized that Trump was acting as a candidate—not as president—when trying to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment still includes the same four criminal counts on which Trump was initially charged.
The former president also faces an election interference case that alleges that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, a swing state that narrowly backed President Joe Biden four years ago. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘ probe focuses on Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump urged him to “find” enough votes to tilt the election in his favor, as well as an alleged plot to submit a false slate of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.
It remains unclear when, or if, a trial will be held in Georgia, but the case is unlikely to go to trial before November’s presidential election.
In a case brought forward by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Manhattan jury in late May convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to subvert the 2016 presidential election by obscuring “hush money” payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair approximately one decade earlier.
The former president, who denies that an affair took place and claims all of his court cases are part of a Democrat-led “witch hunt,” has argued that the Supreme Court‘s recent ruling on presidential immunity, which grants immunity for some official acts by sitting presidents, means that his convictions should be thrown out.
Trump also faced 40 federal charges in federal Judge Aileen Cannon‘s court over his alleged handling of sensitive materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He was also accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve them.
Cannon, a Trump appointee to Florida federal court, dismissed all charges against the former president in his classified documents case after claiming Smith was wrongfully appointed as special counsel.
Smith is now appealing that decision to a federal appellate court in Florida and wrote in a filing on August 26 that Cannon’s “private citizen” remark was more than 150 years out of date.
On Monday, Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Sarafina Chitika released the following statement regarding Trump’s remarks to Fox News.
“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.
“While Donald Trump is pushing his false history about the past, the American people are ready for a new way forward. 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.”
Newsweek emailed the Trump campaign for comment Sunday night.
Trump’s comments to Levin that aired Sunday night were met with immediate response online.
Legal analyst and MSNBC host Katie Phang reposted a clip of the Fox News interview on X, formerly Twitter, and wrote, “Criming and then confessing to the criming. That’s a Trump specialty.”
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote on X, “There’s no right to ‘interfere’ with a presidential election,” she said. “This is the banality of evil right here—Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost. And, he will do it again. We must vote against him in overwhelming numbers.”
In the first part of the interview with Levin that aired Saturday night, Trump discussed Vice President Kamala Harris’ aggressive style of questioning, ahead of their debate scheduled for September 10.
Trump said Harris “fought people like I’ve never seen,” during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
“And for her whole life, she fought people like I’ve never seen anything like it…look at the way she fought Justice Kavanaugh. The viciousness and the violence,” he said. “She’s a Marxist,” Trump said.
This is a developing news story and will be updated with more information.
Update 09/01/2024, 11:25 p.m. ET: This article was updated with more information.
Correction 09/02/2024, 1:55 p.m. ET: This article was updated with a correction to Brett Kavanaugh’s name.
Update 09/02/2024, 3:17 p.m. ET: This article was updated with more information.
