WASHINGTON: Donald Trump offered a full-throated defense of his conduct Tuesday in his first public remarks since being charged over hush money payments to a porn star, blasting the criminal prosecution as “an insult to our country.”
Hours earlier the 76-year-old former US president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts in a dramatic hearing in New York that transfixed the nation — and began the countdown to the first-ever criminal trial of an American president.
Trump again protested his innocence and asserted on his Truth Social platform that the “hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,’ and therefore, no case.”
In his speech, Trump lashed out anew at the prosecution and attacked in bitter terms the prosecutor and the judge presiding over the case despite being admonished hours earlier about incendiary rhetoric. In a sign of that other probes are weighing on him, Trump also steered his speech into a broadside against a separate Justice Department investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America — never thought it could happen,” Trump told an audience of several hundred donors, political allies, and other supporters after returning to Mar-a-Lago, his beachfront mansion in southern Florida.
“The only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it… It’s an insult to our country.”
EXPLAINER: The charges against Donald Trump in three hush money cases
Former President Donald Trump delivered a campaign-style speech to cheering supporters at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night after his arraignment on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. https://t.co/1AROnwoNtD pic.twitter.com/aOz5MMWYIw
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 5, 2023
Trump — the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination — said from a stage festooned with American flags in an opulent gold-and-cream ballroom that “radical left” prosecutors were out to get him “at any cost.”
The bizarrely celebratory mood in the room seemed at odds with the gravity of the day’s events in Manhattan, with Trump reprising the applause lines that his supporters hear regularly at his rallies — and being rewarded with the same boisterous cheers and clapping.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is prosecuting Trump for cooking his company’s books to hide payments he arranged for adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 election, to cover up an alleged sexual encounter a decade earlier.
Trump: I have Trump hating judge with a Trump hating wife and Trump hating family pic.twitter.com/PyAXCWn3mv
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 5, 2023
Trump’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg is serving a five-month jail term for the same charge of falsifying business records.
It shows how even as Trump is looking to reclaim the White House in 2024, he is shadowed by investigations related to his behavior in the two prior elections, with prosecutors in Atlanta and Washington scrutinizing efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the 2020 presidential election — probes that could produce even more charges.
In the New York case, each count of falsifying business records, a felony, is punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if a judge would impose any prison time if Trump is convicted. The next court date is Dec. 4 — two months before Republicans begin their nominating process in earnest — and Trump will again be expected to appear.
A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.
‘Darkest hours’
Manhattan prosecutors say Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
A “statement of facts” released alongside the indictment included details of hush money payments to Daniels, Playboy model Karen McDougal and a former Trump Tower doorman claiming to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock.
Daniels was paid $130,000 by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, while McDougal and the doorman got $150,000 and $30,000 respectively from AMI, the publishers of supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer. Bragg alleges that Trump and his allies “also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments.”
Trump and his lawyers have accused Bragg of overreaching in his characterization of the alleged misconduct.
The one-time reality TV star had sent a fundraising email even before flying back to Florida, saying that since the news of his indictment broke, his campaign had raised over $10 million. “While we are living through the darkest hours of American history, I can say that at least for this moment right now, I am in great spirits,” Trump said.
The twice-impeached Republican is the first sitting or former American president to be criminally indicted. Earlier in the Manhattan courtroom, he answered “not guilty” to all charges in a clear voice, sitting with hunched shoulders and at times looking annoyed but mostly listening cooperatively.
ALSO READ | Timeline of scandal that led to Trump’s conviction
Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Here’s what happened inside the courtroom. https://t.co/cVGNyRrhVC pic.twitter.com/bKMegccMmN
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 5, 2023
‘Election interference’
Judge Juan Merchan said a trial could potentially start as soon as January — a month before the presidential primaries kick off — although Trump’s lawyers have indicated they would want it pushed back to next spring.
In a spectacle that played out on live television — with rival protesters rallying outside — the hearing marked a watershed moment for the US criminal and political system.
A crowd of hundreds had gathered, with pro-Trump protesters — sporting “MAGA” hats and attire emblazoned with the American flag — yelling slurs at their opponents.
Trump for years rejoiced in his reputation as a playboy but has always denied the tryst with Daniels, which would have occurred just after his third wife Melania gave birth.
In a rambling, conspiracy theory-laden tirade to his supporters, he described Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge” and denounced Bragg for what he called “massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country.”
But he spent much of his speech mocking several more serious investigations he faces, repeating previously-debunked allegations about being treated differently from previous presidents.
They include his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia, his alleged mishandling of classified documents taken from the White House, and his involvement in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
(With inputs from AFP, AP)
ALSO READ | Jan. 6 report: Trump ‘lit that fire’ of Capitol insurrection