President Biden is speaking at a campaign event near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on Friday to mark three years since supporters of then-President Donald Trump rioted at the U.S. Capitol.
Mr. Biden’s address is the first he’s giving this year.
It is becoming increasingly clear that he expects the former president to prevail in the GOP primaries and believes he will face his 2020 opponent again in the 2024 general election.
The Biden campaign says the president will give remarks “to mark the anniversary of Donald Trump trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the U.S. Capitol at his urging.”
Mr. Biden’s campaign says it will be sharpening its criticism of Trump, focusing the campaign’s messaging on the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy. It’s language Mr. Biden has long used and that formed the basis of his 2020 campaign. At the time, he referred to Trump as an “existential threat” to America — and that was long before the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.
As of this week, 1,240 people have been identified and charged with crimes related to their participation in the Capitol riot and 452 of them were charged for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers, the FBI said in a news release marking three years since the attack.
“Three years after thousands of people violently attacked the U.S. Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers in an unsuccessful attempt to block our democracy’s peaceful transfer of power, the FBI and our partners continue to succeed in holding them accountable,” David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said in a statement.
Trump’s federal trial on charges that he tried to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election is slated to begin in March, when primary season will be in full swing. He is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. He has repeatedly insisted he did not break the law.
Mr. Biden’s choice of Valley Forge as the location of the speech alludes to the winter of 1777-1778, which marked one of the darkest periods of the Revolutionary War for George Washington’s Continental Army. Even though soldiers were plagued by unrelenting cold, illness and food shortages, the troops persevered in their pursuit of independence.
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