Read Trump’s furious reaction to indictment: ‘This is war’

Former president Donald Trump released a four-minute video after announcing he had been hit with federal charges for allegedly retaining classified documents. Mr Trump reapeated his false election fraud claims and accused the military of being “woke”. Below is the former president’s statement in full:

Very sadly, we’re a nation that decline. And yet they go after a popular president, a president that got more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country by far, and did much better the second time in the election than the first. And they go after him on a boxes hoax, just like the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and all of the others. This has been going on for seven years. They can’t stop because it’s election interference at the highest level.

There’s never been anything like what’s happened. I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person. They had the Muller hoax, the Mueller report, and that came out no collusion after two and a half years. that was set up by Hillary Clinton and Democrats, but this is what they do. This is what they do so well, if they would devote their energies to honesty and integrity it would be a lot better for our country. They could do a lot better. They could do a lot of great things. But when you look at what’s happened to our country in the last three years. We were energy independent. We had a strong military that wasn’t woke. We were doing so well. We were respected all over the world, got the biggest tax cuts in history, biggest regulation cuts in history. And what do you do? You have a president where an election was taken. Got more votes than any sitting president in history, by far, never anything even close.

And they come after me, because now we’re leading in the polls again, by a lot against Biden and against the Republicans by a lot . But we’re leading against Biden by a lot, a tremendous amount. And we went up to a level that they figured, the way they’re going to stop us is by using what’s called warfare. And that’s what it is. This is warfare for the law. And we can’t let it happen. We can’t let it happen.

Our country is going to hell and they come after Donald Trump. Weaponising the Justice Department. Weaponising the FBI. We can’t let this continue to go on because it’s ripping our country to shreds. We have such big problems, and this shouldn’t be one of them. It’s a hoax. The whole thing is a hoax. Just like Russia, Russia, Russia, just like the fake dossier was a hoax. You saw the Durham report. You saw the Mueller report. It was all a big hoax. You had two impeachments, and they lost, and we won. And we had tremendous support. But that was a hoax and a scam. And now they’re doing it again. It’s just a continuation, seven years, even after I’m out. But it’s called election interference. They’re trying to destroy a reputation so they can win an election. That’s just as bad as doing any of the other things that have been done over the last number of years and especially during the 2020 election.

So I just want to tell you, I’m an innocent man. I did nothing wrong. And we will fight this out just like we’ve been fighting for seven years. It would be wonderful if we could devote our full time to making America great again. And that’s exactly what we did. But now, again, our country is in decline. We’re a failing nation, and this is what they do. I’m an innocent man. We will prove that again. Seven years of proving it and here we go again. very unfair, but that’s the way it is. I just want to thank everybody. We are doing something very special for our country. We’re putting America first I always put America first. And that’s why we were in a position. Unfortunately, that position is no longer valid because they’ve done such a poor job. But we’re in a position where we’re going to make America great again. I’m innocent and we will prove that very, very soundly and hopefully very quickly. Thank you very much.