After leaving his appeals court hearing over his claims of presidential immunity in his federal election interference case on Tuesday, Donald Trump gave an ominous warning as he said, “It’ll be bedlam in the country.”
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, awaits an appeals court ruling on whether he has presidential immunity protection in his election interference case in Washington, D.C. The argument, however, is expected to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has led the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, accusing Trump of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that led to the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. In August 2023, Trump was indicted on four counts by the DOJ in relation to the riot. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is politically motivated.
Meanwhile, the former president has also argued presidential immunity would shield him from being tried for these charges, though critics say he was not acting in his official capacity at the time.
After the federal appeal court heard arguments on Trump’s presidential immunity claim for more than an hour on Tuesday, the former president spoke to reporters, criticizing the DOJ investigation into him and President Joe Biden.
“I think it’s very unfair when a political opponent is prosecuted by the DOJ, by Biden’s DOJ…I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win and that’s not the way it goes. It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. It’s the opening of a Pandora’s Box, ” Trump told reporters.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s spokesperson via email for comment.
“When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy. And I feel that as a president, you have to have immunity, very simple, and if you don’t, as an example in this case of immunity, I did nothing wrong,” Trump added.
However, when a reporter asked for more clarity on Trump’s use of “bedlam in the country”, the former president did not answer and walked away.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Biden-Harris HQ shared the exchange as Trump was asked, “You just said there will be ‘bedlam in the country,’ will you tell your supporters no violence?” Trump did not answer and walked away.
Trump’s comments come after the third anniversary of the January 6 riot, which has been marked by various warnings from others about Trump as the 2024 elections are around the corner.
Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, issued warnings about Trump and the state of American democracy.
Cheney, who has been amongst the most prominent GOP critics of Trump, served on the House select committee that investigated the riot, along with Kinzinger and seven other Democratic representatives. In December 2022, the committee published an 845-page report that said the former president was personally responsible for the riot and recommended he face criminal charges.
While serving in Congress, Kinzinger and Cheney were also among the 10 House Republicans who voted in support of impeaching Trump after the riot.
On Friday, while speaking to Dartmouth College students, Cheney issued a warning about Trump, adding her belief that Trump would refuse to hand over the reins of power if elected to a second term.
“He won’t leave office. He already tried not to leave office once. So I think there’s a lot of living in a fantasy world that’s going on with Republicans telling themselves, ‘Look, we’ll vote for him, it won’t be so bad.’ It may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast. It will be that bad,” the former congresswoman said.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Kinzinger took to X to share a video warning voters about Trump, adding that the 2024 election is about a single issue, democracy, as the anniversary of the riot aims to remind voters of how to learn from history.
“Today, the third anniversary of this stain on our democracy, is not a day just to revisit darkness but rather is a perfect time to expose and shine a light upon lies. I’ve always said democracies are not judged by their bad days, but by how we emerge from them. And that history has yet to be written,” he said.
The court of appeals could release a decision on Trump’s immunity in the coming weeks. That decision may then end up being appealed to the Supreme Court ahead of the election interference trial, which is scheduled to begin March 4.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.