Sentenced to a $355 million (€330 million) fine on Friday for having committed financial fraud, Donald Trump compared his treatment on Tuesday February 20 to that reserved for Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison in Russia on February 16.
“It’s a form of Navalny. “It’s a form of communism or fascism,” he said at a public meeting in Greenville, South Carolina. Donald Trump calls the judge who convicted him “crazy,” adding: “This guy decided I was guilty before the trial started. » The former president was sentenced to this fine on Friday for having committed fraud by colossally inflating the value of his real estate empire in order to obtain more favorable financing from banks.
Relaunched by a Fox News journalist, Mr. Trump did not mention Russian President Vladimir Putin. He simply hailed Mr. Navalny as a “very courageous man,” who “probably would have been better off staying away and speaking from outside the country,” instead of voluntarily returning to Russia in January 2021. “This is also happening in our country,” he warned: “I have eight or nine trials under my belt because (…) I am in politics (…). We are becoming a communist country in many ways. »
Donald Trump targeted by 91 charges
The comments come following initial controversy sparked by the former president's silence over Mr. Navalny's death in a Russian prison on Friday. “The fact that he doesn't say anything about Navalny [shows] that either he sides with Putin and thinks it's okay for him to kill his political opponents, or he just doesn't think it's okay an important matter,” said her rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, on Sunday.
The ex-president is now using this affair to argue a cabal against him, nine months before the presidential election. On Monday, he came out of silence on his Truth Social network to defend this thesis by denouncing the “CROY judges of the radical left”.
In addition to this civil conviction concerning his real estate empire – a decision which he appealed – Donald Trump is also charged in four criminal cases, concerning his electoral pressures after the 2020 election, his management of confidential documents, or his payments to make silence a former pornographic actress who claims to have had an extramarital affair with him. In total, he has 91 charges.
