El Salvador President Criticizes Trump Indictment Saying It Undermines US Foreign Policy

Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, takes a selfie before addressing the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 26, 2019. Lucas Jackson/REUTERS

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, criticized the indictment of former President Donald Trump, arguing that it would be hypocritical for the United States to promote democracy abroad at this time.

“Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted,” Bukele wrote in an April 4 tweet.

“But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.

“The United States ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”

The former president and leading Republican candidate for 2024 pleaded not guilty to an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat elected in a deep blue county who has prosecuted Trump cases.

Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business documents related to a 2016 payment for a nondisclosure agreement with adult entertainment actress Stormy Daniels mediated by then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

For his part, Bragg defended his case against the former president, saying on April 4 that Trump employed a “catch-and-kill” scheme to “identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects.”

“Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws,” Bragg said.

“Manhattan is home to the country’s most significant business market. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct.”

Trump and several of his family members spoke out after the April 4 arraignment, which marked the first of its kind for a former president of the United States.

Son Eric Trump wrote on Twitter: “Alvin Bragg has shut down the entire city, called up 38,000 NYPD police officers, closed down the FDR Drive, and is spending an estimated $200 million of city funds, all for a $130,000 NDA. I never thought I would see this level of corruption in the United States.”

Additionally, in an interview with Fox News, Eric Trump said that the Manhattan district attorney’s prosecution of his father endangered the lives of New Yorkers.

“How many people in New York died because the entire NYPD wasn’t doing their job because they were dealing with Alvin Bragg’s political charade?” he asked. “People have to put this into perspective. They’re doing this to persecute a guy that’s winning the Republican nomination by 35 points. It’s not even close. They want to take him out of the race.”

Eldest son Donald Trump Jr. called the arraignment politically motivated and urged people to sign a petition to “defend the Constitution and stop the political persecution” of Trump and the “other political persecutions this opens the door for in the future!!!”

Trump Jr. also shared a link to a Breitbart article that revealed that the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s case, had worked on the Biden–Harris campaign in 2019.

The former president addressed supporters hours after the indictment but first took to Truth Social to announce that there’s “no case.”

“Just lifted off for Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at around 5:30 p.m. on April 4.

“The hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ’surprises,' and therefore, no case. Virtually every legal pundit has said that there is no case here. There was nothing done illegally!”