“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION! MAGA2024”
That’s Donald Trump, who hasn’t said much about the death of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison last week. But on Monday, the former president and leading Republican candidate finally made a statement on the late Russian dissident and Vladimir Putin critic.
Trump implied a link to Navalny’s death with the many legal issues he himself is facing — from criminal cases to a blow to his businesses, which was culminated with a civil-litigation loss last week.
Read more: Meet the former organized-crime prosecutor now overseeing the Trump Organization
“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social, the social-media platform linked to Trump investments. Trump wasn’t talking about about the crackdowns on protests against the government, but instead was angry that he was facing legal issues to begin with.
Background: The stock linked to Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is flying high. Read this before you invest.
Earlier on Monday, Trump posted that he faced a “crooked, hand-picked judge” who handed down a $355 million settlement against his companies, saying they engaged in a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth.
Judge Arthur Engoron wrote Friday that Trump and his company were “likely to continue their fraudulent ways” without the financial penalties and other controls he imposed. Engoron said that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility,” and that experts who testified on his behalf “simply denied reality.”
Trump’s anger over the ruling was a theme for the weekend. On Sunday, he wrote that facing trial for non-political reasons was “a coordinated attack on freedom an liberty” as well as “an attack on the future of our nation.”
Over the weekend, Trump did indirectly post about Navalny and Putin. However, in this case, Trump quoted an editorial from a conservative pollster, which compared the Republican to Navalny, and Biden to Putin. It’s an inadvertent suggestion that Putin was acting inappropriately — something Trump has long avoided doing.
–With additional reporting from the Associated Press
This story originally appeared on Marketwatch
