Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in on former President Donald Trump’s legal woes on Thursday, lamenting the fact that it appears as though voters will not know the outcome of most of the trials he is facing before November's election.
“Justice delayed is justice denied, and the people in our country, it looks as though will most likely go to vote without knowing the outcome of these other very serious trials,” Clinton said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday.
Clinton, who ran against Trump as the Democratic nominee in 2015, commented on the hush money trial against the former president related to the 2016 election currently underway in New York City. The trial – now in its fourth week is the only one of the four criminal cases against Trump that has gone to trial thus far.
“The one that is going on now currently in New York is really about election interference,” Clinton said on MSNBC on Thursday. “It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”
Trump faces 34 charges of falsifying business records around purported efforts to cover up his alleged infidelity with an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, during his 2016 presidential campaign. The former president has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
Paying hush money itself is not illegal but prosecutors are aiming to prove effectively that, in this case, the payment was aimed at helping Trump win the presidency and therefore amounts to election interference.
“I think the defendant, the former president, knew exactly what he was doing when he went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people because he understood the electoral significance,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state also criticized the Supreme Court for its questioning when it heard arguments last month regarding whether Trump should be immune from federal charges that he allegedly tried to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election. The high court has not released a decision on the case.
“The other point I would quickly make is that the Supreme Court is doing our country a grave disservice in not deciding the case about immunity,” Clinton said on Thursday.
“What we heard when this case was tried before the Supreme Courts – to my ear at least – were efforts to try to find loopholes to try to create an opportunity for Trump to have attempted to overturn an election,” she continued.
Trump faces four felony counts in the Washington, D.C., case filed by special counsel Jack Smith, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, two charges related to obstructing an official proceedings and conspiracy against rights.
The election interference case was set to go to trial in early March, but was put on hold indefinitely amid Trump’s appeal. The Supreme Court has faced some criticism for delaying the case further by hearing the case.
Spectrum News' Ryan Chatelain and Justin Tasolides contributed to this report.