Trump says court went 'very well' after first day of testimony

After opening arguments and the first day of testimony at his hush money trial in New York City, former President Donald Trump told reporters he thought "it went very well." ​The former president ​told members of the press he believed he is being unfairly prosecuted for a "legal expense," but made no mention of the criminal conspiracy to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.

Video Transcript

- Mr. Trump, how did it go today?

DONALD TRUMP: I think it went very well.

This is a case, where you pay a lawyer. He's a lawyer, and they call it a legal expense. That's the exact term they used, legal expense in the books, and another thing that wasn't even said was we never even deducted it as a tax deduction.

So that takes a whole-- most people want to deduct everything. We never even took it as a tax deduction, but they call the payment to a lawyer a legal expense in the books. They didn't call it construction. They didn't say you're building a building.

It called a payment to a lawyer, because as you know, Cohen is a lawyer represented a lot of people over the years. I'm not the only one and wasn't very good in a lot of ways in terms of his representation, but he represented a lot of people. But he puts in an invoice or whatever, a bill, and they pay it, and they call it a legal expense. I got indicted for that.