April 4, 2023 Trump impeachment news

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Former President Donald Trump was applauded at an event at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. (Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters)

Former President Donald Trump spoke at his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday night after his arraignment in Manhattan on felony charges of falsifying business records — and delivered a series of false claims that previously – debunk.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday.

The former president has repeatedly been imprecise when he has circled the subject of a federal investigation into his handling of government officials. He also repeats some of his favorite lies on various subjects.

Here’s a fact check of some of Trump’s claims:

George Soros and the district attorney: As he did on social media last month, Trump touted liberal billionaire donor George Soros while criticizing District Attorney Alvin Bragg in his speech Tuesday night — claiming that Bragg is a “radical left, George Soros-backed prosecutor.”

Facts First: This requires context. Soros has not made any donations to Bragg’s 2021 election campaign, and a Soros spokesman, Michael Vachon, told CNN that the two men had never communicated in any way; there is no evidence that Soros had any role in Bragg’s decision to prosecute Trump. However, Soros, a longtime supporter of Democratic district attorney candidates who favor criminal justice reform, did not directly support Bragg’s election campaign: he is a major donor to a liberal political action committee, Color of Change PAC, which says it spent just over $500,000 on an independent spending effort in support of Bragg’s candidacy.

Vachon told CNN: “Between 2016 and 2022, George Soros personally and the Democracy PAC (a PAC to which Mr. Soros has contributed funds) together contributed approximately $4 million to Color of Change’s PAC, including $1 million in May 2021. None of those funds were earmarked for Alvin Bragg’s campaign. George Soros and Alvin Bragg never meet in person or communicate via phone, email, Zoom etc. There is no contact between the two.”

Handling of former presidents’ documents after leaving the White House: Defending his handling of government documents, which is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation, Trump repeated his false claims with several other former president who took the documents with them when leaving the White House.

Trump claimed in his speech on Tuesday that “openly taking boxes of documents and most of the clothes and other things in my home” was something “President Obama did.” He continued, “The Bushes have done. Jimmy Carter’s done. Ronald Reagan is done. Everybody’s done.”

Facts First: This is false, as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) itself pointed out in a statement last year; there is no evidence that past presidents have done anything like Trump did after the Presidential Records Act went into effect in 1981 (starting with the Reagan administration). In fact, NARA was granted custody of the presidential records of former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and both George Bushes once these presidents left office, as required by the Presidential Records Act, and NARA, not the those presidents, moved. those documents in temporary archival facilities — facilities managed by NARA.

NARA said in an October statement that it had obtained physical and legal custody of the records of Obama, Reagan, HW Bush and W. Bush, as well as the records of President Bill Clinton, “when the that president in office.” It said of the temporary facilities to which the documents were transferred: “All such temporary facilities meet strict archival and security standards, and are managed and supervised exclusively by NARA employees. Reports indicating or implying that the President’s records are in the possession of former Presidents or their representatives, after they have left office, or that the records are held in substandard conditions, is false and misleading.”

Inflation: Trump claimed the United States has “an economy crippled by the greatest inflation we’ve seen in over 60 years.”

Facts First: Trump’s “60 years” claim is an exaggeration, even though the inflation rate remains high by historical standards.

Last June, the year-over-year inflation rate hit its highest level since late 1981, 9.1%. But about 41 years is not round to “60 years,” much less “more than 60 years”. The actual highest year-over-year inflation rate for the last 60 years was 14.8% (in the early 1980s), higher than the mid-2022 level. More importantly, year-over-year inflation has now fallen for eight straight months, hitting 6% in February 2023 — nowhere near the 60-year high.

This claim by Trump is an example of how the former president tends to increase his inflated numbers over time. At a campaign rally in Texas in late March, he claimed — also incorrectly — that the country had the highest inflation in “50 years.”

Read more here.

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