CEDAR RAPIDS — Once again facing the possibility of a criminal indictment, former President Donald Trump complained of “evil prosecutors” and a “weaponized” Department of Justice Tuesday night as he made an unannounced stop Tuesday night through a local county party meeting in Iowa.
Trump spoke to more than 150 people at a meeting of the Linn County Republican Party after taping a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity in Cedar Rapids. Fox did not permit other media outlets to attend the event, which was scheduled to air at 8 p.m. Central.
“We have a man — the only way he can get elected is to weaponize the Justice Department, which he’s gone around doing,” Trump told the crowd, referring to Democratic President Joe Biden. “I didn’t know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries and all of this. Now I’m like becoming an expert. I have no choice, because we have to. It’s a disgrace.”
Trump posted on Truth Social early Tuesday morning that he is a target of a federal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots and could soon be indicted on charges related to efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
In his social media post, Trump said special counsel Jack Smith sent a letter “giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”
The former president was first indicted in March over his alleged role in a hush money payment to two women who said they had sex with Trump before the 2016 election. He was indicted again in June over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
Trump has not said whether he would appear before this grand jury, and it was not immediately clear what specific charges may be pending.
In Cedar Rapids, Trump did not directly mention the potential indictment. But he once again claimed without evidence that Democrats “cheated” in the 2020 election. Dozens of courts have dismissed those claims as unfounded.
“If you say something about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life,” he said. “It’s a disgrace. So they can cheat on an election. But if somebody wants to question the cheating, they want to call you a conspiracy theorist and all these other things.”
Many attendees arrived in “Make America Great Again” hats and Trump campaign T-shirts, saying they had some advance warning of Trump’s arrival.
But others were caught off guard when they arrived to their regularly scheduled meeting — alerted to the event only when they pulled into a crowded parking lot and met Secret Service agents conducting security checks at the door.
Emma Aquino-Nemecek, wearing a “Team Trump” T-shirt, drew the former president’s attention from the lectern.
“Watch the show tonight,” Trump told the group. “I saw you there because I recognize that beautiful shirt.”
Aquino-Nemecek said she attended the Fox News town hall earlier in the day and was excited to hear Trump say he saw her there. She plans to caucus for him in January.
“He’s the only one that can do the job. Nobody else,” she said.
The 64-year-old Marion resident said that the indictments against Trump are politically motivated.
“It’s going to be a civil war if that happens again,” she said.
Steve Scheib, a 74-year-old Cedar Rapids resident, said he wasn’t excited to see Trump attend the meeting.
“I voted for him in the last election because there was no other options,” he said. “But I think this coming election, I really like Nikki Haley. I like Tim Scott.”
Scheib called the indictments against Trump “a bunch of crap.” But he said he’d still prefer to see someone else get the GOP nomination.
“I’d rather see anybody else be in because if Trump gets the nomination, I think the Democrats are going to do everything they can do, legally and illegally, to not get him elected,” he said.
Trump has ruffled feathers in Iowa recently after criticizing Gov. Kim Reynolds in a Truth Social post for choosing to remain neutral in the Republican primary rather than endorsing his campaign. “I don’t invite her to events!” he said in the post.
Reynolds, who has attended multiple events with Trump in the past, told reporters on Tuesday that she is “absolutely” still open to doing so.
She said she’s already invited Trump to join her “Fair-Side Chats” at the Iowa State Fair next month.
“He’s been invited, so hopefully he’ll take that opportunity to show up,” she said. “I think it’s a great way for Iowans to see kind of a different side of our candidates. Who wouldn’t want to come to the Iowa State Fair?”
But, unlike with Trump’s last indictment, she did not immediately rush to his defense Tuesday.
“I haven’t even had a chance to look at that,” Reynolds told reporters at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
“I’m not entirely surprised by what’s happening,” she said. “It seems to be a pattern with what we see coming out of this administration, but I haven’t had a chance to even look at it to comment.”
Trump doubled down on his comments during an interview on WHO Radio Tuesday night.
“When I spoke to Kim, she told me very nicely that she would like to remain neutral,” Trump said in the interview. “I said, ‘Wow, you want to remain neutral.’ I said, ‘That’s strange.’ I didn’t expect that from her. … So I was surprised at that, to be honest with you. Because again, I did rallies for her. I did things for her. She would not be governor. So, she would not be governor. She was substantially behind.”
USA Today contributed to this report.
Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.
