Trump Accuses ‘Criminal’ Prosecutor of Election Interference in Defiant Post-Arraignment Speech
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Appearing to great fanfare at Mar-a-Lago hours after his New York arraignment, former president Donald Trump cast Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg as a “criminal” prosecutor who, along with other progressive prosecutors across the country, is twisting the law in service of a political agenda.
Trump has been charged with 34 counts of felony falsification of business records in connection with a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. The former president denies he did anything wrong in the New York case and he denies he did anything wrong in other probes into him in Washington D.C. and Georgia. Trump, who is in the middle of campaigning for the 2024 presidential election, is the first president to have ever faced criminal charges.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” Trump said as in a wide-ranging speech.
“From the beginning, the Democrats spied on my campaign. Remember that. They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations. Russia, Russia, Russia. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Impeachment hoax number 1, impeachment hoax number 2, the illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago right here,” Trump said.
The former president had harsh words for Bragg, who has indicted Trump before his colleagues in other parts of the country.
“Our elections are like those of a third-world country. And now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country. Beginning with the radical left, George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg who campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump,” he said.
“Before he knew anything about me…he was campaigning,” Trump continued. “As it turns out, virtually everybody that has looked at this case, including RINOs and even hardcore Democrats, say there is no crime and that it should never have been brought.”
“Even people that aren’t big fans have said it. They said, ‘This is not the right thing to do.’ It’s an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us for so many other reasons,” Trump added.
The former president further accused Bragg of violating New York state law by leaking his indictment to news outlets before unsealing it on Tuesday.
“The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information for which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum, he should resign,” he said.
Trump also said New York attorney general Letitia James ran on a campaign to get Trump and is now persecuting him in a civil fraud case.
“She should be focused on violent crime that’s driving people out of the state. This is a persecution, not an investigation. She’s putting my family through hell,” explained Trump.
“They want to settle the case. But I want no part of that,” Trump asserted.
The former president’s targets are not only in New York state, however. Trump attacked Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, who assembled a special grand jury to investigate Trump’s alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 election in that state.
“In the wings they’ve got a local, racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call,” Trump said, referring to a call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked if enough votes could be found to put Georgia in his column. Trump called for the Georgia probe to be dropped.
Trump also had harsh words for special counsel Jack Smith, who secured a victory against Trump earlier today when an appeals court ruled against Trump’s attempt to exert executive privilege to shield his aides from testifying. Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is investigating Trump at the federal level for efforts to overturn the 2020 election before and on January 6, 2021. He is also probing Trump’s handling of classified documents.
Trump called Smith a “radical left lunatic known as a bomb thrower who is harassing hundreds of my people day after day over the boxes hoax.” Trump is referring to the FBI’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate, where boxes of classified documents were recovered by agents.
“We were raided by many gun-toting FBI agents who took whatever they wanted including my passports and medical records. Everybody was in shock. No one had ever heard of such a raid before,” explained Trump.
“I immediately thought of the Fourth Amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure. But they did it anyway because our justice system has become lawless. They’re using it now in addition to everything else to win elections,” he continued.
Near the end of the speech, Trump summarized his position by saying his many enemies can’t beat him democratically, so they are trying to beat him by other means.
“They can’t beat us at the ballot box, so they try and beat us through the law,” Trump said.
The former president’s campaign is capitalizing on his arrest, Axios reported. It claimed to have raised over $10 million since news of the indictment broke.
The campaign has even sent an email advertising a T-shirt with a fake mugshot of Trump with the phrase “NOT GUILTY” below it.
During the Tuesday speech, a sign on Trump’s podium instructed those watching to text a number which leads them to a campaign fundraising page. “As the never-ending witch hunts heat up, please make a contribution to defend our movement and SAVE America,” the final paragraph of the page read before offering up a selection of possible dollar amounts.
