President Joe Biden, at a campaign event on Monday, called former President Donald Trump a convicted felon who “lost his temper” after the 2020 election.
“For the first time in American history, a convicted former president is seeking office,” Biden told an audience at a fundraiser in Greenwich, Conn. “But as disturbing as that is, what’s more pernicious is the full-scale attack that Donald Trump is waging on the American justice system.”
Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money trial in New York. Biden spoke about Trump’s conviction on Friday, blasting the attacks Trump and his allies have hurled at the justice system.
“It’s reckless, dangerous and irresponsible to say there was fraud just because you don’t like the verdict,” Biden told reporters at the White House last week.
Biden made similar remarks on Monday, saying it was “reckless and dangerous to say an election was rigged just because you don’t like the results.”
“Something really broke inside this guy,” Biden said after the 2020 election. “Literally, he’s going crazy.”
Biden also described Trump as “crazy.”
NBC News first reported last week that Biden’s team had considered taking a more aggressive stance on Trump’s legal issues in the run-up to his conviction, and those discussions included the possibility of calling Trump a “convicted felon,” NBC News reported.
Throughout the trial, Biden’s team has been cautious about commenting directly about the trial, moving carefully to avoid playing into criticism from the Trump campaign that the case amounts to election interference by the Biden administration.
Trump has slammed the verdict and the legal process since being found guilty in a Manhattan courtroom. Speaking to reporters outside Trump Tower on Friday, he called the trial a “fraud” and claimed “this is all down to Biden and his aides. This is the work of Washington.”
As NBC News reported in January, attacks on the justice system have intensified as key dates in Trump’s criminal and civil cases approach.
He again denounced the sentence in a wide-ranging interview with Fox News on Sunday, saying any prison time or house arrest in the case could be a “breaking point” for the public.
Trump remains facing criminal charges in three cases – the Georgia election interference case, the Florida documents case and the federal election interference case – and is also appealing the results of a civil trial.
