Trump reveals why he had the right to 'interfere' in the 2024 election

Former President Donald Trump issued a blunt statement in a Fox News interview that he had 'every right' to interfere in a presidential election, while expressing amazement at how his poll numbers jumped after getting indicted.

Trump made the comment in an interview with conservative host Mark Levin, while complaining about the new superseding indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith's team.

'Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted and you poll numbers go up. When people get indicted, your poll numbers go down. But it was such a such nonsense,' Trump said in the interview. 

He called it 'bad precedent' that he got charged in the January 6 case, and took personal credit for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not being charged with crimes during his own tenure.

'I had to make a decision. Do I want to do this? Do I want to put the wife of the president of the United States and Secretary of State, by the way. Do I want to put her in prison? And I'm trying to unify a country that really was broken badly,' Trump said.

Trump's statement echoes arguments by his legal team in an immunity case that his interventions with state election authorities fall within the purview of his office 

Trump also visited the aftermath of the attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Levin asked him if he got a call or a note from Harris.

'No,' Trump responded. 'Not that I know of.'

Then he mentioned 'that I did get one from Biden.' Biden has spoken previously about reaching out to Trump after the assassination attempt. 

Trump called his own prosecution 'the worst case of election interference anyone has ever seen.' 

Do I want to put the wife of a president of the United States in prison? I didn't want to do that.

Trump also spoke about the Georgia election interference case and his New York Stormy Daniels hush money trial. 'This is all coming out of the Department of Dustice in order to get their political opponent, me,' he said, bringing back an accusation that the Justice Department and AG Merrick Garland have denied.

Trump said he was 'surprised' at Garland, then claimed he considered renominating him to the Supreme Court after Senate Republicans stalled the Obama nominee at the end of Obama's term.

The result was to ultimately give Trump the first of three Supreme Court nominations.

I'm surprised at Merrick Garland because I thought he was – I knew he was very liberal. There were those that said, you know, because when I came in, I put three Supreme Court justices in. And they've been very brave, actually, in many ways. But they're very, you know, highly thought of people. But there were some people that wanted me to put him in when I first came in. And they thought that could unify the country,' Trump said. 

'I had a decision to make, and I didn't know if if it would be accepted or – people would say, what's he doing? Why is he doing it? And then I said, I wonder if they do it, and you know that if they had that option, which is in the conservative vein, you know, they wouldn't do it.