In his first comments since a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying company records, President said Joe Biden took a thinly veiled swipe at the former president’s attacks on the justice system.
“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for someone to say this is rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
The president’s comments came hours after Trump blamed him for his legal troubles in remarks to the press and supporters, saying: “This is all being done by Biden and his people. This is done by Washington. No one has ever seen anything like it.”
Trump criticized both the prosecutors and the judge who oversaw the case, saying: “This is a scam, this is a rigged trial. It shouldn’t have been in that location. We shouldn’t have had that judge.”
In his remarks on Friday’s ruling, Biden said, “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” and praised the 12 jurors in the cases for their careful deliberation and reaching a unanimous verdict.
“Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said, adding that the case “was heard by a jury of twelve citizens, twelve Americans and twelve people like you.”
Trump has repeatedly railed against the New York criminal case, the judge who oversaw it, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the charges against him, and some of the witnesses who ultimately testified at the trial.
The verbal attacks prompted Judge Juan Merchan in March to impose a partial gag order on Trump, barring him from speaking publicly about potential jurors, individual accusers and “known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses regarding their possible participation.”
Trump has repeatedly accused Merchan of imposing the order, claiming the judge “took away my constitutional right.”
Merchan later ruled that Trump had violated the gag order multiple times, fining him a total of $10,000 and threatening to throw him in jail.
Biden and Trump have not met in person so far this election cycle, but the two will share the stage for the first general election debate in Atlanta in late June.
It is possible that the two candidates will be asked about the former president’s legal troubles during their debate. Trump has often blamed Biden for his legal troubles, falsely accusing the sitting president of “weaponizing” the Justice Department.
Trump still faces charges in three other cases — one in Georgia, where he is accused along with more than a dozen others of working to overturn the 2020 election results there, and two federal cases related with his attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election and related to his storage of classified documents.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
