Hillary Clinton said she took no joy in Donald Trump’s legal troubles when a grand jury investigating the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results Monday night returned an indictment in what may be his fourth criminal complaint this year could.
“I don’t know that anyone should be happy,” Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Monday after initially smiling and shaking her head at the news. “I’m just deeply saddened that we have a former president who has been indicted on so many charges.”
“He wanted to betray the United States and the citizens of our nation,” Clinton, a former secretary of state, added of Trump. “He used tactics of harassment and intimidation. He made threats. He and his allies cracked down on state officials… . We’ll wait and see what happens [Georgia prosecutors] say… but I don’t know that anyone should be satisfied. It is a terrible moment for our country that a former President should be charged with these terribly important crimes.”
Trump was indicted by the Justice Department earlier this month over his attempts to ensure that the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden, is not confirmed as president. In Georgia’s case, the explicit point is that Trump is trying to have that state’s election results annulled.
In 2016, Trump rode into the White House by, among other things, accusing Clinton of being “wrong” while conducting an investigation into classified materials stored on a private email server during her time as secretary of state, which at his Campaign events led to cries of “Lock them up!”
Now Trump is the one facing criminal charges, including in a separate federal investigation, for his alleged misuse of classified documents after leaving office.
But if Clinton feels any glee at the fact that Trump may face jail time, she didn’t show it in Monday’s interview.
“The only satisfaction can be that the system works,” she said. “That’s all the effort [to subvert the 2020 election] have been brought to light and justice will be sought.”
The former Democratic senator also called Trump a “demagogue” and said he made “conscious efforts to divide Americans.” [and] lying to Americans.
“What happened on January 6 – ‘Don’t believe what you saw, believe what I tell you’ – these are all hallmarks of authoritarian, dictatorial leaders,” she added.