South West Illinois News

Former State Sen. Paul Schimpf, a candidate for Monroe County State’s Attorney, is slamming the indictment and arraignment of former President Donald Trump. 

“Prosecutors & elected officials would do well to remember that it IS NOT about them. It should be about what is good for our country, states, & communities. President Trump should not have been indicted yesterday,” Schimpf, a Waterloo resident, said in a statement on Facebook. 

The indictment against Trump lists 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The charges were brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg whose predecessor had declined to press charges. Bragg ran for office on the promise of prosecuting Trump, Washington Examiner reported.

Trump is accused of making a number of improper payments in 2017 “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission” in many cases through invoices from his former attorney Michael Cohen, according to the indictment document.

In comments at his Mar-A-Lago estate in the wake of the arraignment, Trump denounced the charges. 

“This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election, and it should be dropped immediately,” Trump said, according to KUSI News.

He claimed interference from intelligence agencies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the November 2020 election. 

“Just recently, the FBI and DOJ in collusion with Twitter and Facebook in order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from him, which exposes the Biden family as criminals and which, according to the pollsters, would have made a 17 point difference in the election result,” Trump said. “And we needed a lot less than that. Like about 16.9. It would have been in our favor, not my favor, our favor because our country is going to hell. And we remember the 51 intelligence agents who said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. It didn't exist. It was Russian disinformation. Remember that? And that was all confirmed strongly by the FBI when they all knew that it wasn't Russian disinformation and so much more.”