Biden Goes All-in on ‘Lawfare’ Against Trump in Detroit Rally Speech

An ailing President Joe Biden, trailing in the polls, touted the many criminal cases against former President Donald Trump in a rally speech Friday in Detroit, Michigan.

Biden called Trump a “convicted criminal,” which elicited chants of “lock him up.” He then recounted the list of cases, federal and state, that the Biden administration and Democratic prosecutors in New York and Georgia have pursued against the leader of the political opposition.

Biden said:

No more! Donald, no more free passes. Today, we are going to shine a spotlight on Donald Trump. [Coughs] We are going to do what the press so far hasn’t [sic], but I think they’re gonna soon. We are going to say who he is, what he intends to do. Folks, Donald Trump is a convicted criminal.

[Crowd cheers, chants “Lock him up!”]

He was convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felonies for paying hush money to a porn star and hiding it from voters in 2016. Donald Trump was found liable for sexual assault by a judge who said to not be fooled by Trump brushing it off. Here’s what the judge wrote, the judge in that case wrote:  “Mr. Trump attempted to minimize sexual abuse, finding it frivolous” [sic] Mr. trump “raped” her — That’s the judge’s line, not mine — he raped her as many people understand the word raped — the word rape. Folks, Donald Trump is a business fraud. He lost his license to do business in New York State. He has been fined over $400 million for giving false information to banks. And he is still facing charge[s] for mishandling classified information, which is a criminal offense. He still facing charges for his role on January 6, trying to overthrow the outcome of the 2020 election. He still facing charges in Georgia for election interference. Remember his phone call? “I just need 11,780 votes” [sic]. Name me another president who has done any of that.

Biden ignored several inconvenient facts:

• The press has hardly avoided negative reporting on Trump; there have been no “free passes.”
• Trump was not convicted of paying “hush money,” but of supposedly failing to report it as a campaign expense, which he was not legally required to do before Election Day in 2016. The case is widely viewed as bogus.
• Biden misquoted the judge in the civil case against Trump. He did not say Trump called sexual abuse “frivolous,” but rather that Trump’s defense was “frivolous” (in the judge’s view). The judge’s claim that Trump “raped” writer E. Jean Carroll contradicted the finding of the jury that Trump had not, in fact, raped her.
• Trump lost his business license in a fraud case pursued by a Democrat prosecutor who ran on a promise target Trump, before a Democrat judge, in a case involving a statute that had never been used before in New York. The penalty was appealed and the appellate courts placed a hold on the enforcement of the penalty, pending appeal.
• Trump’s $454 million fine in the fraud case was widely viewed as outrageous, and Trump won appeals to stay the collection of the fine while he put up a $175 million bond, pending the appeal of the lower court’s judgment.
• Trump’s trial for “mishandling classified information” is in serious jeopardy, due to the mishandling of evidence by the prosecution and a challenge to the constitutionality of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment. Biden himself only escaped prosecution for the same crime because he was seen as too old and infirm to stand trial.
• The charges in the January 6 case against Trump are likely to be thrown out after Supreme Court decisions on abuses of authority by the Department of Justice and presidential immunity from official acts while in office.
• Biden misquoted Trump’s statement on a phone call with Georgia officials. He never ordered them to find votes, but simply stated that he believed that a proper count of the votes would yield what he needed to win.
• Biden ignored the fact that the Georgia prosecution against Trump is falling apart amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, which could result in the removal of District Attorney Fani Willis from the case.

In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Holman Jenkins recalled that prosecutions against Trump proceeded in earnest after an April 2022 leak from the White House to the New York Times in which Biden was said to have been frustrated with Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted,” the Times reported at the time.

President Biden tried in the past to claim that the prosecutions against Trump were free from political interference, despite evidence of White House meetings with some prosecutors, and the unusual circumstance in which a former senior Department of Justice official, Matthew Colangelo, left Washington to lead the prosecution against Trump in a trial court in Manhattan.

Now, the Biden campaign has fully embraced the attack on Trump as a “convicted felon.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.