Donald Trump delivered a boatload of false claims in a grievance-ridden speech on Tuesday hours after being arrested and arraignment on criminal charges in New York, casting himself as the victim of a political prosecution and railing against what he called a “lawless” justice system.
The former president, speaking at Mar-a-Lago, his personal residence in Palm Beach, FL, went on an extended tirade against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office indicted him last week in a case involving hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an alleged extramarital affair head of the 2016 election.
Trump also attacked the judge presiding over the case, Justice Juan Merchan, calling him a “Trump-hating judge.”
“You want to get President Trump at any cost,” Trump said. “As it turns out, everyone who has looked at this case … says there is no crime and it should never have been brought. Never have been brought.
“It’s an insult to our country,” he added, “and the world is already laughing at us.”
Trump then turned his ire on law enforcement officials in Georgia and Washington, D.C., investigating other potential crimes.
He claimed that he is being investigated by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis over a “perfect” phone call – which he made clear was his January 2, 2021, phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump unsuccessfully urged his fellow Republican to somehow “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election in the state.
“Nobody found anything wrong with that perfect call until a book promotion tour many months later. All of a sudden, they said, ‘You know, I remember Trump making a call. Let’s look at that,’” Trump said.
He then attacked special counsel Jack Smith, who’s investigating his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, accusing Smith of “threatening” his allies with jail time in order to force them to cooperate with his inquiry.
“We have this Jack Smith lunatic threatening people every single day through his representatives,” Trump said. “They’re threatening jail terms. But talk about Trump and you’ll go free.”
“That’s the country in which we live in, however, right now.”
He also defended his handling of classified documents he took with him upon leaving the White House in 2021, saying he took the documents “in good faith” and was being treated unfairly by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Trump’s remarks before a friendly crowd came just after he returned to Florida from New York, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts, including falsifying business records and conspiracy in connection to multiple hush money payments.
