Donald Trump was defiant in his first public look since being indicted on 37 legal counts tied to his dealing with of labeled paperwork, telling an viewers of Republicans that the costs had been “ridiculous and baseless”.

Talking at an occasion in Georgia hosted by the state’s Republican conference, Trump stated the indictment would “go down as among the many most horrific abuses of energy within the historical past of our nation”. The previous president is searching for to drum up help for his third bid for the White Home forward of a possible match-up with Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential election beneath a cloud of authorized issues.

“Biden is attempting to jail his main political opponent — an opponent that’s beating him by quite a bit within the polls, similar to they do in Stalinist Russia or communist China,” Trump stated. 

The previous president has been accused of breaking seven completely different federal legal guidelines. The fees unsealed on Friday embody 31 counts linked to violations of the Espionage Act, particularly the wilful retention of nationwide defence data with out authorisation. He’s additionally dealing with allegations of conspiracy to impede justice and making false statements. 

The federal case is linked to paperwork seized by brokers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property throughout an August raid. The previous president had already turned in additional than 15 bins of labeled paperwork, a few of which had been labelled “prime secret”. The supplies present in his Florida dwelling had been situated in a ballroom, his bed room and a rest room and bathe, amongst different places. Trump is because of seem in entrance of a choose in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday.

The fees, introduced by the Division of Justice following a probe by a particular counsel, mark the newest authorized setback for Trump, who stays the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 election.

The previous president on Saturday boasted that the indictment had pushed his ballot numbers “approach up” and that fundraising was “by way of the roof”.

“We’re beating the hell out of Joe Biden. That’s why they’re doing it,” Trump stated. “If I wasn’t there’d be no witch hunt, there’d be no indictment.”

With this indictment, Trump is the primary former president to face federal legal fees. He’s additionally the primary former president to be charged in a legal case in state court docket and now faces 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise information. He has pleaded not responsible to the allegations, which had been introduced by the Manhattan district lawyer. 

He may face a 3rd indictment this summer season associated to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. On Saturday he defended his actions, saying he had “each proper to complain that the election in Georgia was in my view rigged”. 

The previous president has additionally been mired in a raft of civil authorized actions, together with accusations that he, his kids and the Trump Group repeatedly lied to lenders and insurers about asset valuations. In Might, Trump was additionally ordered by a Manhattan jury to pay $5mn in damages linked to a sexual abuse and defamation civil go well with introduced by author E. Jean Carroll.

Trump is just not alone in dealing with scrutiny for the dealing with of presidency paperwork, nevertheless. The DoJ has launched a second particular counsel to analyze materials present in Biden’s residential storage in Delaware and his former personal workplace in Washington. Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, who can be searching for the Republican nomination, was additionally investigated however no fees had been introduced.

On Saturday, Trump repeated his declare that taking the paperwork was not a legal act due to the Presidential Data Act, a legislation that units out who controls paperwork and different information from the presidency. The act says official presidential information are owned by the US, not the president, and have to be stored in a federal depository.