Former U.S. President Donald Trump compared himself to the recently deceased Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
Knewz.com has learned that Trump drew a direct line between his legal woes in the United States and those of Navalny, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for extremism and died in a Siberian penalty colony on February 16, 2024.
He said Navalny was a “very brave man” who should not have returned to Russia.
Trump then added that a $355 million fine issued by a New York Court for fraud was a “form of Navalny” and said the case was like “a form of racism or communism.”
“It’s happening in our country, too. We are turning into a communist country in many ways. I have eight or nine trials all because of the fact that ... I’m in politics,” said Trump.
The former president’s legal woes are well documented.
The New York Court case determined that Trump had inflated his wealth for financial gain and fined him $355 million plus $100 million in interest. Trump was also banned from doing business in New York for three years.
Beyond the New York case, he also owes the author E. Jean Carroll $88 million after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, then guilty again for defamation.
Trump is also part of a sprawling RICO probe in Georgia that is investigating his actions in the run-up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
As for Navalny, he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for extremism. He returned to Russia after recovering from being poisoned in 2020 and was promptly arrested when he landed in January 2021.
Navalny was later transferred to an Arctic penalty colony, where he died last week after feeling unwell while taking a walk. Authorities in Russia said he died of “sudden death syndrome.”
Prior to the interview on Fox News, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
In a subsequent post, he added that “political prosecutions of your favorite president” must stop immediately, highlighting that the U.S. is in the middle of an election cycle. He claimed that the proceedings amounted to election interference.
Over the past few days, the comparisons to Navalny have not also included a condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom U.S. President Joe Biden blamed directly for Navalny’s death.
During the Fox News interview, when pressed by host Laura Ingraham to criticize Putin, Trump dodged any mention of the Russian leader’s name and said, according to The Associated Press, “If I were losing in the polls, they wouldn’t even be talking about me and I wouldn’t have had any legal fees.”
“If I were out, I think — although they hate me so much, I think if I got out they’d still, ‘let’s pursue this guy, we can’t stand this guy.’”
