Trump Aide Issues Dire Warning About ‘Banana Republic’ Hush Money Trial

Ahead of the start of Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial in New York on Monday, his 2024 presidential campaign national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claimed that the fact that the trial was permitted to go ahead is proof that the U.S. has descended into acting like a “banana republic.”

Talking as a guest on Fox News this weekend, Leavitt—a longstanding pro-Trump Republican who already worked as part of the former president’s White House press team—repeated his claims that the criminal cases against him are part of a political “witch hunt” led by President Joe Biden’s administration to weaken his position ahead of the November election.

The case in New York is related to the alleged payment of hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, ahead of the 2016 presidential election. While Trump’s former attorney allegedly made the payment, prosecutors say his company falsified its business records to conceal the financial transaction.

“What is taking place in this city this week is a travesty of justice,” Leavitt said. “It’s an unprecedented time in which we have the sitting president of the United States in Joe Biden weaponizing the justice system against his political opponent,” she continued. “This is what happens in third-world banana republics, not here in the United States of America.”

A banana republic is a term usually reserved for small, poor countries marred by corruption and led by authoritarian regimes which are economically exploited by foreign corporations conspiring with local government officials.

A clip of the Fox News interview with Leavitt was shared on social media by Trump War Room, the official War Room account of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Leavitt described the hush money case as a “Biden trial at the behest of a far-left District Attorney in Alvin Bragg who has spent more time prosecuting Trump than the violent criminals who are running free in the streets of New York right now.” She also called Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, a “partisan Democrat.” She added that the case was “election interference.”

Newsweek contacted Trump’s 2024 campaign team for comment by email on Sunday morning.

Trump is facing 34 felony charges in relation to this case and has pleaded not guilty to all of them. His previous efforts to get Merchan to recuse himself from the case, saying he was biased against him, and to get the trial delayed have failed. It is finally set to go ahead on Monday, April 15, with jury selection.

The case is the first of the criminal cases facing the former president to go to trial, and is likely to be the only one to start before the November election. Trump is expected to bring any of the cases against him to a halt if he wins the race against Biden and returns to the White House in 2025.