CNN
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Former President Donald Trump said in 2016 that an impeached president would “paralyze the operations of our government” and create an “unprecedented constitutional crisis,” years before he himself was indicted on federal charges while running for a second term as president
Trump made the comments nearly seven years ago about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“We could have a sitting president under a felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said he said during a campaign on November 5, 2016 rally in Reno, Nevada, reviewed by CNN’s KFile. “It would stop the government.”
A few days earlier, on October 28, then-FBI Director James Comey publicly announced that they had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information related to her use of a mail server private email during her term as secretary of state.
Now Trump finds himself in the exact situation he repeatedly described after he was indicted in early June on 37 federal charges related to withholding classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The judge in the case had set a tentative trial date for mid-August, but that is likely to be postponed. The special counsel’s office requested a trial in December. The flexibility of when the trial will begin leaves uncertainty as to whether the case will conclude before the 2024 election.
But Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will not be disqualified from the presidency even if he is convicted, and he he told Politico in June that he will not drop out of the presidential race if convicted of the charges.
In another demonstration of November 3, 2016, in Concord, North Carolina, Trump made similar comments.
“If he were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis that would paralyze the operations of our government,” he said. “He’s likely to be under investigation for many years, and he’s also likely to end up, in my opinion, in a criminal trial. I mean, take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.”
“She has no right to run, you know,” Trump said. “There is no right.”
trump added at a November 5, 2016, rally in Denver that as the “prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation,” Clinton’s controversies would make it “virtually impossible for her to govern.”
The comments aren’t the only ones from Trump’s past campaigns that could have aged poorly with his legal troubles. In another comment, made when he was running for re-election, Trump acknowledged that only the sitting president could release classified information.
CNN previously reported in an exclusively obtained audio recording that Trump said as president that he might have declassified a document about plans to attack Iran that he was showing to aides after he left office, but acknowledged that he had not he could do it now that he is no longer president.
“And you know the newspapers and the press and the fake news that went around and said he just gave classified information,” Trump. he said at a rally in Pennsylvania in September 2020 when discussing their conversations with author Bob Woodward on nuclear weapons. “First of all, I’m allowed to do it, I’m the president, so I’m allowed. I’m the only one, I’m the only one allowed.”
In September, CNN’s KFile reported that Trump previously called for long prison sentences for those who mishandle classified information.
