Trump: They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom.

The following is a CHQ prepared transcript of former President Donald Trump’s remarks at his Bedminster club following his June 13, 2023 indictment by the Biden Department of Justice:

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. It's a great honor to have you here. Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. Very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he or -- of which he would be guilty right in the middle of a presidential election in which he's losing very badly. [cheers and applause] it is called election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election. More importantly, it's a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation. This thing will go down in infamy, and Joe Biden will forever be repped as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly the president who together with a band of his closest thugs and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy.

[inaudible or garbled parts of the speech made necessary some edits to the transcript, the unedited video and audio are available through the CNBC video below]

But they will fail and we will win bigger and better than ever before. [cheers and applause] charging a former president of the United States under the Espionage Act of 917 -- 1917 -- [background sounds] an act for a crime so heinous that only the death penalty would do and threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers which just about every other president has done. One of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.

The Espionage Act has been used -- on spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents. As president, the law that applies to this case is not the espionage act, but very simply the Presidential Records Act which is not even mentioned in this ridiculous 44-page indictment. Under the Presidential Records Act -- which is civil, not criminal – I’d had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject known as the Clinton socks days. [laughter] case.

You know what that means?

After leaving the White House, Bill Clinton kept 79 audiotapes in his sock drawer. They included discussions of U.S. military involvement in the Haiti -- in Haiti, discussions of U.S. foreign policy both defense and offense against Cuba, recordings of President Clinton's conversations with all of the many foreign leaders at the time.

Think of that.

Sensitive facts about trade negotiations taken from presidential briefings, discussions with the Secretary of State about conflict in Bosnia and much, much more. Very big stuff. Not only was Bill Clinton never even considered for criminal prosecution based on the tapes he took, but when he was sued for them, he won the case. Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president's term -- [cheers and applause] and in the president's sole discretion is.

You're surprised to hear that, aren't you?

Any normal administration, even an opposing one, would consider that to be the end. But not the corrupt Biden administration. The socks decision, as it's known, also states, quote: the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, does not have the authority to designate material as presidential records. They're not the authority. NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty or means to seize control of them. This is law. The president enjoys unconstrained authority to make decisions regarding the disposal of documents. That's unconstrained to make that decision. Neither the Archivist nor the Congress has the authority to veto the president's decision. The Presidential Records Act does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute this responsibility is left are solely to the President of the United States.

Think of that. That's the decision. Think of that. [applause] now, just think of that. In other words, whatever documents are presidential -- a President decides to take with him, he has the right to do so. It's an absolute right. This is the law. And that is something that people have now seen, and it couldn't be more clear. They ought to drop this case immediately, because they're destroying the country. [cheers and applause]

And this is why no other president, even those who kept far more documents than I, has ever been even investigated, let alone charged with a crime. Because the sham indictment put forward by Biden administration included staged photographs of boxes at Mar-a-Lago, many people have asked me why did I have these boxes, why did to you want them? The answer, in addition to having every right under the Presidential Records Act, is that these boxes were containing many types of personal belongings, many, many things, shirts and shoes and everything.

As can be seen in the picture where someone, not me -- I wonder who it might have been -- dumped one of the very neatly arranged boxes all over the floor. They were full of newspapers, press clippings, thousands of pictures. Thousands and thousands of White House pictures. The White House photographer, some are with us today. They took so many pictures, and we saved all of them, and they were this -- in those boxes. Clothing, memorabilia and much, much more. I hadn't had a chance to go through all the boxes. It's a long, tedious job, takes a long time. Which I was prepared to do, but I have a very busy life.

I've had a very busy life. They make it more busy because they're always fighting. [cheers and applause] and under the socks decision, there seemed to be no rush are. I wasn't in a rush because that decision was law.

The other picture that was so vile, you remember that one, angry and corrupt was the photo staged by the FBI. And those that raided Mar-a-Lago, they were putting documents all over the floor. Remember that famous picture? All over say confidential, said presidential, said all sorts of things. And it was supposed to be there, like it was that way when they raided. It wasn't that way. They put them there, took the picture and released it illegally to the press.

They took my medical records, my passport, my birth certificate and apologized. They even brought a safe cracker, this is a professional safe cracker they brought in to Mar-a-Mago, and they broke into my safe. And you know what they found? Nothing. There was nothing there. [cheers and applause] nothing there. Zero.

According to the Presidential Records Act, which was a big deal, I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-tote thing FBI agents -- gun-toting. I have security tapes of it. I gave them security tapes of everything. In a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution which protects the right against unreasonable search and seizure. [applause] and, Sebastian, you covered it very well, I must say. Very well.

I'm not the one who thinks I'm above the law, I'm the one that followed the law. I'm the only one. [applause] it's Biden and his corrupt Department of Injustice who think they are above the law.

Never before have the two standards of justice in our country been more starkly revealed. Joe Biden had troves of classified documents from his time as Vice President and even as a Senator, which was completely and totally illegal.

In fact, other Senators heard about it, Dick Durbin heard about it, you have the see his response. No way that's totally illegally. Out of a SCIF. They were shocked when they found out. They actually thought it was impossible to do. Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware making the search very, very difficult for anybody, and he refuses to give them up, and he refuses to let people even look at them. And then they say how he's behaving so nicely.

Many of Biden's classified documents were in Chinatown, D.C. Chinatown -- [laughter] which is shocking considering his family received so much money from China. I wonder how many times the friends of ours from China reviewed those documents? Chinatown, D.C. others were unsecured at his so-called Penn Biden Center in Washington which paid Biden approximately $1 million a year, the money supposedly coming from China and still other classified documents were strewn all over his garage floor where his now-famous Corvette is stored. He's so proud of that car. There was no security, and the door was left open most of the time. It was open. All of those classified documents, all of those documents strewn all over the floor, piled up like junk.

Unlike me who had absolute declassification authority as President. Joe Biden as Vice President had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right. Instead of falling under the Presidential Records Act, Biden's actions fell under a much stricter -- under a much stricter act which has very, very tough criminal penalties, yet nothing happens to Crooked Joe. Have you heard anything about the big search for his documents? No, only me.

Most and famously of all, Hillary Clinton set up an illegal private server in her basement. You never heard this story. [laughter] with the deliberate intention of violating public information laws so she could hide her pay-for-play scandals at the Clinton Foundation or whatever. Hillary saw vast quantities of classified and sensitive information on her illicit server, some of it happening to leak. It leaked into Anthony Wiener's computer. Remember Anthony Wiener? [laughter] into his computer. You don't want to be on his computer. [laughter] and is all of it was illegal. Because, thankfully, she was never President. She didn't have the powers to declassify -- [cheers and applause] thank you. She didn't have the powers to declassify. There's a big difference. And neither did Joe. You know, didn't have -- do you mind? [applause] a little bit cooler than it was in Miami, but it's pretty hot out here.

Thank you, happy birthday. Great birthday. [cheers and applause] .. 400 years. If you add them all up, a fake 400 -- thank you, darling. That's very nice. We are going to make it into the greatest birthday of all. [cheering].

When caught, Hillary sent elitists, nobody does that because of the expense but it's pretty conclusive. 33,000 e-mails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched the subpoena was there and she decided to delete acid wash and smash and destroy her cell phones with a hammer and then they say i participated in obstruction? There's never been obstruction as grave as that.

She did this in the face of everything and nobody did anything about it. The FBI and the DOJ protected her and did not issue subpoenas, didn't use a grand jury committed and execute search warrants and then the corrupt head declared no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case. Can you believe that? That was one of just many items.

Hillary Clinton broke the law and she didn't get indicted. Joe Biden broke the law and in many other ways we are finding out. So far has not gotten indicted. I did everything right and they indicted me. But we are serving as a great example in the case of Bill Clinton 's National Security Advisor, remember that, he was caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives, very big ones, important by stuffing them in his pants. That's pretty. [laughter] and putting them also in his socks. He destroyed them and cut the tape with scissors, cut them all up. What he did was highly illegal, but he was given nothing, no jail time, nothing happened. And there were there were countless other examples.

Bill Clinton , who I happen to like, hard to believe -- before I did this I was actually quite friendly with him. They should have used him a little bit more of an advisor on the 2016 election. He said you better get to Wisconsin. You better get to Michigan, you're going to lose. No we are not, they did.

Bill Clinton lost the nuclear codes and absolutely nothing was done. He lost the nuclear codes. [laughter] the George W. Bush White House lost 22 million e-mails, a record and a completed transfer of any of the Bush records. A document was spotted on the way to Dick Cheney's house. Can you imagine? Hillary Clinton took hundreds of thousands worth of furniture, china, flatware, rugs and more from the White House and she wasn't prosecuted. How about that when she took the furniture and the china. [laughter]

How about if Trump did that do you think he would have a problem? The horrific violations of my rights by crooked Joe Biden's weaponized Department of Injustice are unthinkable. It's so bad for the country. The Democrats lawlessly pierced my attorney client privilege with lawyers. What they did, what they've done to our lawyers, all of our lawyers they've done things that were absolutely horrible and unthinkable. It's been unbelievable and highly illegal.

We learned more about it from the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times," about the DOJ, than from prosecutors themselves. We want to read about it, pick up the "Washington Post" which is not doing well but they will do better now. But it's not supposed to be that way. We don't want to learn from the Times or from the leaks. We want to learn from the people we are supposed to learn from. It's like a leaking sieve in Washington save but we learned nothing about special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation, he is doing the Biden investigation. He is a very respectable, very nice person, very nice person.

Mine is not such a nice person. Mine is a deranged lunatic, which many times are the magnitude of hours in both number and severity. That is the prosecutor that he gave, he's found nothing. He totally exonerated Mike Pence.

I'm happy about that. He did nothing wrong but he happened to have classified documents at his house, but they exonerated him and Biden is a different story. You have to really think about what I said, as a Senator he took all those documents which was unprecedented. The prosecutor in the case I will call it our case is a fog.

I've named him Deranged Jack Smith. I wonder what his name used to be. It sounds so innocent, doesn't it? What's his name, Jack Smith. He is a very nice man. He is a behind-the-scenes guy, but his record is absolutely atrocious. He does political hit jobs. He's been known to viciously arrest a certain Republican Governor, you know the Governor, Bob McDonald of Virginia and absolutely ruined his life and the life of his family and all his wonderful family members only to have the case overturned 9-nothing by the Supreme Court. He destroyed that man and he destroyed that family.

By the way, I will tell you I'm here and I love you all and we can take it. But what these thugs have done to my family is a disgrace.

I will tell you that. I say it because it's a lot of impact. What they did to my family and that young man right there, he's answered more subpoenas than any human being in the history of the world and they have nothing after all of those, literally thousands of them, Congress, fake Councils, the Mueller Report, all this. All the news did his answers subpoenas all the time. At least he's become experienced enough. Congratulations. But he's fantastic and what he found out, what they've gone through, and these are serious people. What he has done to my family, but they've done to my family is horrible.

He also tried to railroad John Edwards on a completely bogus legal theory that didn't hold up in court. It's no wonder this raging lunatic is not beholden to the Constitution or the rule of law, two things Jack Smith clearly disdains. He looks like a thug, but then I watched him make a speech the other day and he was trembling because it wasn't his territory, and it feels much safer in the Department of Injustice where he can be in his room and scream at people. He is a raging and uncontrolled Trump hater as is his wife who also happened to be the producer of that Michelle Obama piece. This is the guy that I've got.

Don't forget who this is being done by, and the same applies to agencies that for seven years have been running illegal psychological warfare campaigns against the American people. Much as if they were trying to destabilize a foreign country through the no collusion witch hunt, to the impeachment hoax number one and number to two, the 51 lobbying intelligence, how about them, they said Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russia disinformation and they knew it wasn't. It made a difference and yet we still got more votes than any sitting president in history. [applause] and we actually did much better in the second election than we did in the first.

The fake dossier paid for by the Democrats. Remember that one. Think that was easy to go home and say hello, how are you, when they read about that. It wasn't easy at all. And spying on my campaign, we've caught them, we caught them spying on my campaign. The Twitter files and so much more. It's all been a battle of disinformation, one thing after another and all to protect the radical Left misfits.

It's also no coincidence that these charges against me came down the very same day evidence that Joe Biden took a 5-million-dollar bribe. But they don't even want to talk about it. They showed something on television tonight. It had a zero time on the three major networks, zero. About my impeachment almost all the time. I think I had 351 minutes and they had no minutes.

I think a lot of people are going to vote. A lot of people are going to vote. [applause] [cheering] I will tell you I just left Miami and I've never seen love in the streets like that. We see a lot of love. I've never seen love like that. They know, they know what we go through, they see it and they are smart. Many of those people coming from Cuba, Venezuela, other countries they see this happening to their countries. I used to say the United States if it keeps going this way it's going to be Venezuela on steroids and now we are buying oil from Venezuela.

Can you believe we have more liquid gold under our feet to be in any other nation, but we are buying tar from Venezuela, and we are refining it in Houston. The dirtiest worst oil probably anywhere in the world and we are refining it so you can imagine what's going up in the air and all the stuff we are not taking out.

[garbled] we were paying off debt and reducing taxes still further which we were in the process of doing. They want to distract from the real espionage and the real crimes using President Trump to do so. Let's go at it and indict President Trump so they don't talk about the $5 million bribe.

Senator Grassley, they allegedly said on tape, they have 17 tapes I understand. He must be a nice guy to deal with. Nice company. Now they see that once again I was right. I was totally right. [applause] Joe Biden and the radical left could take foreign bribes and be totally protected. Republicans all you must finally get tough, you've got to get tough and you've got to show when you arrest the leading opponent we no longer have a democracy.

[When I was elected, I said] we are going to be soon very dominant within six months we are going to dominate the whole world with energy like a fortune. We are going to be paying off debt and lowering taxes and a level that nobody's ever seen. And they came in and they ended it.

But when that was taken away from us, when the taxes spiraled upward in an uncontrolled way, when murderers are allowed to roam, these are horrible killers, they are allowed to roam the streets of the Democratic run cities, unchecked, but the incompetent District Attorney in New York invites for a crime that everybody agrees, every pundit, everybody, there is no crime, but murderers go out and nobody even comes and knocks on their door and they know they are there and they are roaming their cities all over into some of them are coming in right now to the borders.

But now you have a nation that is in serious decline – a nation in serious decline. They will not hesitate to ramp up the persecution of Christians, pro-life activists and even future Republican candidates which they do. We must end it permanently and immediately now that the seal is broken by what they've done, they should have never done this. This was an unwritten rule, you just don't unless it is really bad. But it's now broken.

In addition to closing the border and removing all of the criminal elements that are illegally invading the country, making America energy independent and even dominant again and immediately ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours. I will appoint a Special Prosecutor to go after the most corrupt President in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family. And all others involved in the destruction of the elections and borders and country itself. And we will get reelected.

I will totally obliterate the Deep State. We know who they are. I know exactly who they are. They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. They want to silence me because I will never allow to them silence you and I'm the only one that can save this nation because they know they are not coming after me. They are coming after you and I just happen to be standing in their way. On November 5th, 2024, justice will be done. We will take back our country and we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you all. [applause] [cheering]

• Trump arraignment

• Trump Bedminster speech

• Mar-a-Lago documents

• Alina Habba

• Loren Merchan

• change of venue

• Matthew Colangelo

• New York Attorney General Leticia James

• George Soros prosecutors

• Stormy Daniels scandal

• Donald Trump indictment

• Democrat Attorney General Leticia James

• Michael D. Cohen

• Federal Election Commission

• Attorney Mike Davis

• fed-surrection

• nationwide protests

• Trump polls