Former President Donald Trump was highly critical of the idea of a candidate running for president under indictment in 2016, seven years before he was arrested twice on felony charges during his 2024 presidential campaign.
In 2016 comments excavated by CNN’s KFile on Monday, Trump slammed his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, saying she “had no right” to run for president because she under federal investigation about her handling of classified information on a private email server during her time as Secretary of State.
“We could very well have a sitting president facing felony charges and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said at a campaign rally on Nov. 5, 2016, in Reno, Nevada. “It would bring the government to a standstill.”
At another rally on November 3, 2016, in Concord, North Carolina, Trump said it would create “an unprecedented constitutional crisis that would cripple our administration’s operations” if Clinton won the election while an investigation is underway.
“She has no right to run,” he said.
Trump, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was charged last month with 37 felonies related to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. Federal prosecutors presented evidence that he knowingly broke the law, obstructed their investigation and refused to return sensitive documents despite repeated government attempts to recover them.
In April, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged him with 34 felonies in a separate case involving an alleged scheme to cover up an affair through hush money payments to influence the 2016 presidential election.
No charges were filed against Clinton. Although the Justice Department is investigating certain that her office had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, investigators concluded that she had not acted with criminal intent.
Trump has asked repeatedly the pursuit and imprisonment of rivals and opponents accused of mishandling classified information.
Some of his public comments on the subject were cited by prosecutors in his indictment last month. The document listed Trump’s comments during campaign speeches in 2016 about the importance of protecting classified information — suggesting he knew the seriousness of not doing so.
“We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified,” Trump said on Sept. 6, 2016.