Trump rips Manhattan DA in primetime speech after arrest

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump ranted against his unprecedented arrest and arraignment Tuesday night, telling supporters at Mar-a-Lago: “We have to save our country.”

“The only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” the 76-year-old said hours after pleading not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential election to two women alleging extramarital affairs with him.

Trump has repeatedly called the case part of a long-running Democratic “witch hunt” against him. His former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to be the star witness for prosecutors working under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump sat stone-faced in court Tuesday afternoon as he became the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.

He did not speak to the throngs of reporters outside the courtroom in Lower Manhattan, saving his vitriol for primetime.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan declined to issue a gag order during the arraignment, but warned Trump to “refrain from making statements likely to incite violence or create civil unrest.”

The 45th president, who was not subject to the indignity of being placed in handcuffs or posing for a mugshot, arrived in his former hometown on Monday afternoon and spent the night at Trump Tower.

Shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday, he left his flagship Midtown building, fist-pumping and waving to cameras as he entered the court building in lower Manhattan.

After his arraignment, which lasted just under an hour, Trump was whisked back to LaGuardia Airport and his private Boeing 757 for the short flight back to Florida.

The live wall-to-wall cable news coverage of Trump’s every movement Tuesday recalled the heady days of 2015 and 2016, which propelled his stunning run to the Republican nomination and his upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors say Trump falsified business records to boost his presidential campaign when he described the payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal as legal expenses.

The charges typically are misdemeanors with two-year statutes of limitation, but Bragg secured the indictment of Trump by arguing that the payments of $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and McDougal for $150,000 via a National Enquirer “catch and kill” contract were in furtherance of federal campaign finance law violations.

Candidates for office are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money, but the funds were paid initially by Cohen, who would have exceeded the federal contribution limit if he was using his own money.

Cohen in 2018 pleaded guilty to unrelated tax evasion charges and to making unlawful campaign contributions by brokering the payments. Trump at the time said Cohen was admitting to non-existent crimes to curry favor with authorities.

Bragg said at a press conference after Trump’s arraignment that “we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct” — even though the progressive prosecutor has taken heat for downgrading more than half of felony cases to misdemeanors.

Prosecutors want the case brought to trial in January 2024, which would coincide with the initial Republican presidential primaries.

The next hearing is set for Dec. 4.

The criminal case has returned Trump to the limelight and driven a surge in donations, Republican endorsements and polling support to his campaign.

Shortly after the arraignment, the former president’s campaign announced it had raised more than $10 million since the indictment was filed March 30.

Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos Republican presidential primary poll conducted March 31-April 3 — after news broke that Trump would be indicted —found that Trump’s support increased to 48% from 44% two-and-a-half weeks earlier.

“The shameful arrest of President Trump is an unprecedented and chilling chapter in the Left’s weaponization of the justice system against their leading political opponent,” fourth-ranked House Republican Elise Stefanik of New York said in a statement.

“President Trump continues to skyrocket in the polls, and just like with the Russia hoax and both sham impeachments, President Trump will defeat this latest witch-hunt, defeat Joe Biden, and will be sworn in as President of the United States of America in January 2025.”

Former Attorney General William Barr, who has clashed with Trump in the past, said in a Fox News interview Tuesday afternoon that Bragg had brought what “appears to be just a pathetically weak case.”

“I think it’ll be largely a legal judgment as to whether there’s really probable cause to believe that this falsification of records was done to defraud anybody,” Barr said.

“And second, whether or not [it] involves the campaign finance law … I don’t think it does.”

The case also drew significant international commentary.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele tweeted, “Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted. 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.”

House Republican-led committees, meanwhile, are demanding information from Bragg’s office, including on whether the local DA was cooperating with Biden administration officials to target the president’s political opponent — as some Trump allies urge Republican prosecutors to use the precedent to bring charges against Biden.

Trump allies have focused in part on the fact that Bragg hired former Biden Justice Department attorney Matthew Colangelo in December to help lead the Trump investigation.

The Justice Department previously chose not to prosecute Trump on the underlying campaign-finance charge following its failure in 2012 to convict former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), who used more than $1 million in donations to his 2008 presidential campaign to conceal his relationship and love child with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

Trump could face additional criminal charges in a trio of other investigations — one in Georgia into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election there, and two federal probes overseen by special counsel Jack Smith; one into Trump’s actions ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and another into his possible mishandling of classified records after leaving office.

Biden also faces a federal investigation of his handling of classified records after he left the vice presidency.

Special counsel Robert Hur is investigating whether Biden or anyone in his orbit illegally mishandled records found at his Wilmington home and former DC office.

First son Hunter Biden, meanwhile, is under federal investigation by the US attorney’s office in Delaware for possible tax fraud, money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and lying about his drug use on a gun-purchase form.

The first son wrote in documents retrieved from his former laptop that he paid as much as “half” of his income to his dad, whom he involved in many of his overseas relationship while he was vice president.

This is a developing story; refresh the page for updates.