Oliver Stone says ‘lawfare’ is new kind of ‘warfare’ being waged against Trump

Stone, known for his politically charged documentaries, made the remarks while discussing his new documentary about socialist Brazilian President Lula da Silva. The film will premiere at the Cannes Festival in France. Lula, as he's called, has been a favorite of many American progressive lawmakers, like AOC and Joe Biden.

The filmmaker compared Donald Trump's political trials to Lula's, which included a corruption probe that resulted in a 580-day jail sentence, and referred to the 91 indictments against Trump by Biden's Department of Justice as "lawfare."

"The charges on both sides of the Trump-Biden election are pretty wild — that Biden is corrupt and Trump is corrupt," Stone told Variety. "It’s a new form of warfare. It’s called lawfare. And that’s what they’re using against Trump."

"I think there’s interesting parallels here in America, as well as all over the world, you’re seeing this kind of behavior. [Trump’s] got four trials and some of these charges, whether you’re for him or against him, they are minor," said Stone.

Stone, who is not a particular fan of the former president, claimed that corruption charges filed against political figures are usually done without examining the root cause.

"Corruption is a way of life," the director said. "It goes back to the Greeks, the Romans, and before that the Babylonians, there’s corruption all through history, so let’s not be Pollyannas about it and think we’re ‘America the clean’ and we’re better than anybody else. That’s such bullsh*t."

Skeptical of Trump's legal cases, Stone argued that the primary cause of political corruption is money-driven politics. He stated that politicians want to be seen positively in the public eye and will use money to guarantee that they are perceived as they want to be, opening the door to corruption.

"In a broad sense of the word, it’s manipulation of your office," said Stone. “You’re trying to control what the perception of you is in the public eye. And if you’re willing to pay money for that. That’s part of the concept of corruption, isn’t it?"

"There is life, there is death and there’s corruption," he explained. "But it’s a scale. You can’t point fingers at another country and say that is a corrupt country and that president has to be removed from office or we have to attack them or end a regime. Who are we to say those things when we are deeply corrupt? Look at the [two] parties. We should be multi-party and we should have public money in politics like they do in Poland. Or look at the English and the French models."

The documentary by Stone chronicles Lula's fall from grace and the intricate sequence of events that culminated in the reversal of his conviction, Variety reports. Lula went on to become president in what many call a corrupt election against Jair Bolsonaro. After leaving office, Bolsonaro has become the focus of prosecution.

While Lula is a socialist and Trump is a Republican, Stone used the analogies between the two leaders to demonstrate that politics is corrupt regardless of political affiliation.