Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will not abandon his campaign for the White House, even if he is convicted on charges related to his handling of classified documents.
Last week, Trump was indicted on 37 counts by the Justice Department including 31 counts of “Willful Retention of National Defense Information,” and one count each of “Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice,” “Withholding a Document or Record,” “Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record,” “Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation,” “Scheme to Conceal,” and “False Statements and Representations.”
With Trump already facing a trial on an indictment by the Manhattan district attorney related to payments made in the 2016 campaign, his interviewer asked him what he would do if the worst happens?
“I’ll never leave,” Trump said, according to Politico.
“Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable,” he said.
Existing laws do not bar Trump from running for the White House even with a conviction.
In the interview, Trump focused on the present, lashing out at special counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department.
“These are thugs and degenerates who are after me,” he said.
Although the theoretical possibility exists that if Trump is elected president in 2024 he could pardon himself, he brushed the notion aside.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have to. I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
Although Trump said he would push on, he noted that the indictments are not what he would have wanted.
“Nobody wants to be indicted. I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months. It’s been political,” he said.
Trump attended events in Georgia and North Carolina Saturday and came out swinging in both.
“I stand before you today as the only candidate who has what it takes to smash this corrupt system and to truly drain the swamp and I’m the only one that they don’t want to do it,” Trump told North Carolina Republicans at their state convention, according to CNN.
“They launched witch hunt after witch hunt, and they just try to stop our movement,” he also said in North Carolina, according to Fox News. “They want to do anything they can to thwart the will of the American people. It’s called election interference. That’s what they’re doing now. And we’ve never seen it on a scale like this. The other side is downright crooked.”
Trump told Georgia Republicans his indictment was “a sad day for the country” and added, “Our people are angry,” according to CNN.
A CBS News poll conducted by YouGov on Friday and Saturday indicated that Trump’s supporters are also loyal.
According to the poll, 61 percent of likely GOP primary voters said the indictments did not change their opinion of Trump, and 80 percent said even if Trump is convicted, he should be able to be president. The poll had a margin of error of 6.6 percentage points.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.