“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny made me more aware of what is happening in our country. It is slow and steady progress, as radical left politicians, prosecutors, and judges lead us down a path of destruction. Open borders, rigged elections, and wildly unfair court decisions are all destroying America. We are a nation in decline, a failed nation! MAGA2024“
This is Donald Trump, who has said little 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 about the late Russian dissident and critic of Vladimir Putin.
Trump has implied a link between Navalny's death and several legal troubles he himself faces, from criminal cases to a blow to his businesses, which culminated in the loss of civil lawsuits last week.
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“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more aware of what is happening in our country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform linked to Trump’s investments. Trump wasn't talking about cracking down on protests against the government, but he was angry because he was facing legal problems to begin with.
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Earlier Monday, Trump posted that he faced a “crooked, hand-picked judge” who issued a $355 million settlement against his companies, saying they participated in a years-long scheme to deceive banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth.
Judge Arthur Engoron wrote on Friday that Trump and his company “are likely to continue their fraudulent ways” without the financial penalties and other controls he imposed. Engoron said Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility,” and that experts who testified on his behalf “simply denied reality.”
Trump's anger at the ruling was a theme of the weekend. Facing trial on non-political grounds was a “coordinated attack on freedom” as well as “an attack on the future of our nation,” he wrote on Sunday.
Over the weekend, Trump indirectly posted comments 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 unintentional suggestion that Putin was behaving inappropriately, something Trump has long avoided doing.
–With additional reporting from The Associated Press
