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Trump lashes out after lawyers meet with DOJ

by Brett Samuels - 06/06/23 10:19 AM ET

Former President Trump unleashed a torrent of angry social media posts Tuesday about the investigations into his conduct, the day after his lawyers met with Justice Department (DOJ) officials.

Trump posted several times on Truth Social, levying claims that he is being politically targeted and offering up misleading comparisons between his own case and President Biden’s when it comes to handling classified material.

“The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” he wrote in one post. “Joe Biden kept (keeps) thousand of documents, in many locations, some illegally taken from skiffs while he was a Senator, a big portion of which were classified. He didn’t want to give them back, and still doesn’t. Nothing happens to him, with same reasonable prosecutor who correctly exonerated Mike Pence. I have a much different prosecutor, a Trump hater!”

Jack Smith, a DOJ special counsel, is investigating Trump’s handling of classified materials after dozens of sensitive documents were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate last summer. Those documents were found in an FBI raid that came after Trump refused to turn the documents over to the National Archives.

A separate special counsel is investigating Biden’s handling of classified material after documents were found at his Wilmington, Del., home and an old Washington, D.C., office from his time as vice president. Biden’s team alerted federal officials upon discovering the documents and turned them over.

The Justice Department last week also cleared former Vice President Mike Pence of any wrongdoing after a small number of classified documents were found at his Indiana home in January.

In several other posts, Trump claimed that the investigations into his conduct amounted to “election interference” as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

“It’s all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE. They don’t want to run against me,” he wrote. “I ran twice, I did much better the second time, getting millions and millions more votes than the first, a record for a sitting President, and am leading Biden in the polls, by a lot. They are the Party of Disinformation! They are using the DOJ & FBI against me to Rigg the 2024 Election.”

“They are also going after me as RETRIBUTION for the Republicans in Congress going after them,” Trump wrote in a separate post. “The difference is, they have created major crimes, I have created none!”

A day prior to Trump’s lashing out, his lawyers met with DOJ officials to discuss the ongoing case against him, according to multiple outlets.

More Trump coverage from The Hill:

ABC News reported the meeting included Smith, who — in addition to the document case — is also probing Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and remain in power, including his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In addition to the special counsel investigation, Trump is under legal scrutiny in Georgia, where a state prosecutor is looking into his team’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

And the Manhattan district attorney in April charged Trump with more than 30 felony counts related to a hush money scheme to keep quiet an alleged affair with a porn star during the 2016 campaign. Trump has denied the allegations.

Trump is currently leading the GOP primary field in most national polls, though polls have been mixed for him at the state level and in head-to-head matchups with Biden. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll released last month showed Trump leading Biden by 7 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, though a Quinnipiac University poll released late last month showed Biden ahead by 2 percentage points.

Tags Joe Biden