He is the first former president charged with 34 crimes and is now free of charges.
“We have to save our country. I never thought that something like this could happen in our country. The only crime I have committed is fearlessly defending our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” In front of some 500 supporters at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, former United States President Donald Trump has defended himself against the accusation against him as he knows best: going on the attack of those he considers to be enemies of America, his detractors, who his trial is taking the country “to hell.”
It was the end of a historic day. Hours before, Donald Trump turned himself in before Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg was arrested and, after taking his fingerprints, appeared before Judge Juan Merchán. He heard the charges against him: 34 counts of document forgery constituting an illegal conspiracy. Through payments that he recorded irregularly, he tried to silence those who could have damaged his electoral campaign in 2016. Trump, the first ex-president indicted, pleaded “not guilty.”
The best-known case that served as the basis for the investigation is that of the porn actress Stormy Daniels, who would have received $130,000 from the then-Trump attorney Michael D. Cohen, who has admitted as much. They also accuse him of paying a model Karen McDougal and a doorman from her building. It would be an illegal plot intended to hide what hurt her campaign. “It is a crime whoever commits it,” said prosecutor Bragg after the former president’s appearance.
Once released with charges, Trump flew to Florida, where he defended himself before his faithful. And he gave a real rally. He is a candidate to be a Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential elections.
Members of his family, such as his son Eric Trump and his wife Lara, Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, his daughter Tiffany Trump, as well as like-minded members of Congress such as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously had organized a rally in a park in New York. The lectern read SMS Trump to 88022, and the flags of the United States are in the background. He has thus presented himself as a faithful martyr.
He has lashed out at President Joe Biden: “If you take the five worst presidents in history and add them up, he would not have committed as much destruction as Biden in our country.” And he has portrayed himself as a victim of an ongoing campaign by Democrats against him (Russia, Russia, impeachment 1 and impeachment 2, the Mar-a-Lago raid, election law changes, and Hunter Biden’s laptop …). He is the world, according to a victimizing Trump.
“Our elections are like those of a Third World country,” he stated, questioning the result of the last presidential elections, in which his rival Democrat Joe Biden won. Trump did not recognize him and instigated his supporters to prevent his proclamation. That ended with the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The congressional commission considers his participation proven and remains for the Department of Justice to rule.
He has linked his accusation to his aspiration to be a candidate for the White House. “This bogus case was filed just to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election. And it must be dropped immediately,” he said.
Although Judge Merchán warned him about his statements, he has again criticized him and questioned his impartiality and that of the prosecutor Bragg, whom he associates with the millionaire George Soros. According to Trump, prosecutor Bragg was the first African-American in office. “He campaigned saying that he was after President Trump. And all those who have seen this case say that there is no crime and that he should never have come to justice ». Judge Merchán says and repeats: “The judge hates me, his wife hates me, the whole family.”
For almost half an hour, Trump has blamed the Democrats and, above all, “the radical left” for persecuting him mercilessly. When it had been running for 25 minutes, CNN decided to interrupt the broadcast. The presenter, Anderson Cooper, has justified it like this: “We thought he was going to talk about what happened today.”
Victim of the “radical left.”
The leading US media have published the speech with comments in which they dismantle the accusations that Trump has made and that he repeats in his campaign interventions.
Trump has also touched on the other legal threats he faces, including a Georgia investigation into election interference, the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents after the presidency, and one by New York’s attorney general, About the Trump Organization.
Regarding the case of the Atlanta district attorney, Fani Willis, he has stated that he is “doing everything in his power to accuse me of an absolutely perfect phone call, even more perfect than the one I made with the president of Ukraine.”
Trump also criticized the lack of attention to the case of President Joe Biden’s classified documents. On the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who deals with the Trump Organization, has repeated that as Bragg, she campaigned to ” get Trump.”
That “radical left,” according to Trump, “does not follow the law” because “the legal system is used to win elections.” It is the message of a former president unleashed, who already has his place in history: he is the first to have been charged with 34 crimes. And it is just the beginning. He can still stand for election.
