Former President Donald Trump declared Friday night, in his first speech after he was arraigned on a four-count indictment charging him with conspiracy and other charges in connection with the 2020 election, that "one more indictment" will lead him to a 2024 presidential race victory.
"Anytime they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls," Trump said during his speech at the Alabama Republican Party Summer Dinner in the state capital of Montgomery. "We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance."
Trump was arraigned and pleaded not guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., Thursday on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States. In the indictment, returned by a grand jury and based on the investigation of a team led by special counsel Jack Smith, Trump is accused of conspiring with six co-defendants, who were not named, in a plan to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump Friday night said the prosecution "lied" and that the "corrupt Biden DOJ" could have filed the charges "2.5 years ago, but they didn't want to do it 2.5 years ago. They wanted to wait and they did wait. They waited right to the middle of an election [and] until I became the dominant force in the polls because we're dominating everybody, including Biden."
But the charges won't "make any impact," because "every time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls," Trump said.
He also railed against Smith, calling him a "deranged human being."
"Somebody said you should treat him nicer, maybe he'd be nicer. Let me tell you, this guy is a lost soul. Bad guy," said Trump. "Don't get nicer. He's a deranged, sick person."
Trump has already been charged in two other indictments this year. The first came in New York, where he is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and others in what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called a "catch and kill" scheme to conceal derogatory information during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump's second indictment came in connection with the storage of documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and a fourth indictment is expected in Georgia, where he is under a grand jury investigation on claims that he took steps there to overturn the 2020 election.
He still holds a strong lead of about 53% support in the GOP primary polls, several percentage points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest rival.
Trump further insisted Friday that the indictments are because the "radical left" is saying "we want Trump."
"That's only because we're leading in the polls, [and] because they are a party of disinformation," Trump said. "We beat them by so much last time. We beat them with crooked Hillary [Clinton]. They've never recovered from that. That's why the hatred is so great."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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