Former President Trump on Tuesday described the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as “horrible,” but doubled down on suggestions it was comparable to his own legal troubles in running for the White House.
“Mr. Navalny is in a very sad situation, but he is very brave,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall with Laura Ingraham. “He was a very brave person. He came back, he could have stayed away. And, frankly, he probably would have been much better off leaving the country and speaking from outside the country rather than going back into the country.” It would have been nice to have, because people thought it could happen, and it did. And it’s horrible.”
“But it’s happening in our country, too,” Trump continued. “We’re becoming a communist country in many ways. And look, I’m the frontrunner and I’m going to be indicted — I’ve never even heard of being indicted — and I’m I’ve been indicted four times. I’ve been tried eight or nine times…all because of the fact that I’m a politician. They indicted me for very ridiculous things.”
Trump was then asked about a judge ordering Navalny to pay him $355 million as part of a civil fraud judgment over his business practices, calling it “a form of Mr. Navalny.” Ta.
“This is a form of communism or fascism,” Trump said.
Mr. Ingraham repeatedly asked President Trump whether he thought he was a potential political prisoner. The former president did not respond directly, instead musing that his critics “hate me so much” that he would have pursued the charges even if he had not been running for president.
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in a Russian prison last week. He was 47 years old.
Navalny is serving a 19-year sentence for extremism and was transferred from another prison to the country’s highest-security facility near the Arctic Circle in December. The “special regime” penal colony in the town of Harup, about 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow, is in a remote area known for its harsh winters.
Navalny has been imprisoned since returning to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from a poisoning, but Putin has blamed the attack, which Putin denies killing Navalny with a nerve agent.
Trump did not comment on his death for several days, but when he did, he brought up his own legal issues.
President Trump faces 91 felony charges in four different investigations. He was indicted in New York City for an alleged hush money scheme to hush up the affair during the 2016 election campaign. He was charged in Washington, D.C., with attempting to subvert the 2020 election. He was charged in Georgia with attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. He was then indicted in Florida over his handling of classified documents and his refusal to return them when he left office.
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