NEW YORK (AP) — A day after a New York jury returned a historic guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s trial, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee held a news conference Friday in which he spoke publicly about his conviction and his bid for the White House.
After his sentencing on Thursday, Trump angrily denounced the trial as an “embarrassment,” telling reporters he was an “innocent man. “
His supporters were quick to echo those sentiments, while many of his critics — political and otherwise — applauded the verdict.
Trump convicted on 34 counts in connection with a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by secretly paying cash to a porn actor who claimed the two had sex. The secret trial and upcoming conviction mark the first time a former U. S. president has been tried or convicted. in a criminal case.
He still faces three other charges, but the New York case is the first to go to trial and likely the only one before the November election.
Judge Juan M. Merchan has scheduled Trump’s sentencing for July 11. The fees carry a sentence of up to 4 years in prison, the punishment in the end falls on Merchan. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to say whether prosecutors would seek prison time.
Currently:
— What You Need to Know About the Guilty Verdict in Trump’s Secret Trial
— Photos: A visual look at the final seven weeks of Donald Trump’s secret trial
— How Trump’s Conviction in the 2024 Presidential Race
— Trump may still vote for himself if he’s not in prison on Election Day.
— Trump’s investigations: those of the prosecutor’s office opposite him
Here’s the one:
Donald Trump claimed Friday that “a record number of terrorists have entered our country. “
While the number of extraterrestrial beings on the terrorist watch list has increased, the federal immigration government says they “are very rare” and make up a small fraction of the total number of immigrants crossing the border.
From October 2022 through September 2023, the U. S. Border Patrol operated the U. S. Border Patrol in the U. S. Border Patrol. The U. S. Department of Agriculture said it saw 169, more than last year. Since October 2023, the Border Patrol has reported 80 encounters.
The former president also claimed, as he did in his recent speeches, that Chinese immigrants were coming to the United States to form an army, and that 29,000 of them had arrived in recent months.
The U. S. has noted that the number of Chinese immigrants has increased tenfold, with 37,000 of them arrested in 2023, but there is no evidence that it has attempted to build a military force or educational network.
Interviews with some of those migrants reveal that they came here to flee the country or in search of a life.
Hundreds of people remained gathered outside Trump Tower in Manhattan after Donald Trump’s news conference on Friday.
Supporters and detractors of the former president waved flags, shouted and chanted against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue luxury stores, adding Armani, Dolce
Even if Trump’s sentence, which expires July 11, included a criminal sentence, he would even be the first candidate to run for president of the United States while incarcerated.
This piece of history belongs to Eugene V. Debs, who ran on the Socialist Party list in 1920 and garnered about a million votes, or about 3 percent.
The cases are markedly different. Debs, despite his influence and fame, was in fact a fringe candidate that year; Trump has held office in the past and is running as the almost certain candidate of one of the country’s two major political parties.
But there are similarities. Read more about Debs here.
House Republicans announced Friday that they will demand that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo, the lead investigator in Donald Trump’s hush money case, appear before lawmakers next month.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the House Select Committee on Armaments will hold a hearing with the two witnesses on June 13.
Jordan, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, had already opened an investigation into Bragg and his case against the former president. He and lawmakers also traveled to New York in April 2023 for a hearing on the prosecution’s case.
Donald Trump on Friday returned to many of the same authoritarian themes he has focused on in his speeches and rallies, describing the United States under President Joe Biden as a “corrupt” and “fascist” nation.
He called the committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U. S. Capitol “thugs” and also Biden a “Manchu candidate,” a word that implies the president is corrupt and used as a puppet by a political enemy.
“They’re destroying our country,” Trump said.
He has largely been outdoors during the election campaign, but Trump’s post-trial remarks served as a condensed edit to many of the issues he historically addresses in his speeches at rallies.
Departing from his promise to appeal the secret verdict and characterizing the trial as a “scam,” Trump also sued President Joe Biden for his border security missteps and for “record levels of terrorists entering our country. “
He also falsely claimed that tens of thousands of Chinese men of military age had recently arrived in the United States, “like the best soldiers. “
Since late 2022, when China’s three-year COVID-19 lockdown began to be lifted, the United States has noticed a sharp increase in the number of Chinese immigrants. But there is no indication that they have tried to build a military force or an educational network.
As is customary at his rallies, Trump also asked his supporters to contribute financially to his campaign.
Donald Trump ended his press conference on Friday, in which he delivered an incoherent reaction to the guilty verdict issued the day before his secret trial.
While calling what he considers a failed country, Donald Trump also briefly recalled what happened on Friday, January 6, 2021, and what he said were false accusations that are in the middle of some other case opposed to him.
He directed his express denunciation to members of Congress who held committee meetings to investigate the attack on the Capitol. Trump also denied trying to physically order a Secret Service agent to take him to the Capitol, which was part of the testimony before the select committee.
He also called former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, among his critics, “the most emotional human being I’ve ever seen in my life. “
President Donald Trump, Joe Biden, “the worst president in the history of our country” at a press conference Thursday morning.
He also called him “the ultimate incompetent” and “the ultimate dishonest. “
“Take a look at how he treats China, Russia and so many others,” Trump said. “It poses a great danger to our country. “
At a news conference Friday, former President Donald Trump said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg analyzed crime and said it is “endemic” in New York City, “to degrees that no one has noticed before. “
He cited a man stabbed with a machete in Times Square on Thursday.
However, crime in New York City is far from the levels seen in the 1990s. The New York Police Department’s most recent crime insights show that primary crime reports have declined this year to the same level as last year. In the first week of May, the number of murders decreased by more than 15% at the same time last year and by 26% in 2021.
Shootings have dropped 41% since 2021.
Donald Trump said Friday he believes he has damaged a record in political history by raising $39 million since the guilty verdict announced in his silent trial as a felon.
This happened for more than 10 hours with small donors.
Early Friday morning, his crusade reported another figure: $34. 8 million.
Donald Trump incorrectly said at a news conference that New York prosecutors who had indicted him in his criminal trial had the right to investigate alleged violations of federal campaign finances.
Manhattan prosecutors did not rate Trump for federal violations (which is not allowed), but indexed the indictments as one of three “unlawful acts” jurors were asked to do when comparing rates. To convict Trump, jurors had to find that he not only falsified business documents, but also did so to commit or conceal some other crime.
Prosecutors said the other offense was a violation of a state election law that prohibits conspiracies to announce or save an election through illegal means. Jurors were then given a choice between three alleged “illegal means. “
One of them is a violation of the finances of the federal crusade.
At a news conference Friday morning, Trump tested the limits of the order barring him from publicly criticizing witnesses in his secret case, Michael Cohen added.
Trump called his former fixer “sleazy,” adding, “all of that. “
Cohen testified against Trump at the trial, saying his former boss ordered him to deal with secret bills and that he was aware of everything he did.
Trump used Cohen’s call, saying, “I’m allowed to use your call because of the silence. “
Calling Cohen “efficient” as a lawyer, he said the former lawyer “got into trouble because of open-air deals” involving taxis.
Donald Trump on Friday called the witnesses who testified against him “lewd” and said their comments against him showed the entire case was politically motivated.
“It had nothing to do with a case, it had to do with politics,” Trump said.
Stormy Daniels, the porn actor in the middle of the anti-Trump hush money case, gave several days of testimony that included major intimate points from their alleged 2006 meeting.
Donald Trump insisted Friday that he wanted to testify in his felon trial, and could have done so if he had chosen to do so. All accused persons have a constitutional right to testify on their own behalf. By choosing not to testify, Trump has waived that right.
Trump said he wanted to testify, but said the judge was looking to get into the main points of the case and that he feared being prosecuted for perjury if he made a verbal misstep.
“I would have liked to testify,” he said. But you would have said anything weird like, ‘It was a beautiful sunny day and it was raining. ‘”
Donald Trump on Friday morning repeated unsubstantiated claims that President Joe Biden and the Justice Department had influenced his secret prosecution in New York.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a statewide prosecutor. His office, which dealt with the secrecy case, operates independently and is under the direction of Biden or the federal government.
Donald Trump began his press conference the day after the verdict by launching a complaint about his opponent in the general election, as well as a “highly conflicted” judgment about who presided over his landmark case.
Since building eponymous apartments in Manhattan, Trump has argued that President Joe Biden and the “group of fascists” surrounding him are failing to secure the U. S. -Mexico border.
But he marked this moment by accusing, as he has done on several occasions, Judge Juan M. Merchán accused him of having “a nasty gag order” that prevented Trump from publicly criticizing the witnesses and many others affiliated with his case.
At the start of a press conference held Friday morning at Trump Tower, Donald Trump complained about his trial as a felon and his upcoming conviction.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anybody,” he said as he took the podium.
He had notes with him, two pages written in black marker.
Trump Media’s Moves
After rising more than 2% at the market open, the stock fell 7%, roughly the levels at which they were trading without delay after the after-hours condemnation announced late Thursday.
Donald Trump’s hush money case, criticized by some legal experts as the weakest of the four prosecutions opposing him, takes on greater importance not only because it was tried first, but also because it would possibly be the only one to triumph in a jury before the election.
The other three — local and federal instances in Atlanta and Washington accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, as well as a federal indictment in Florida accusing him of illegally accumulating top-secret files — are stalled in delays or appeals.
Donald Trump supporters and right-wing pundits waved and shared inverted flag symbols to protest the former president’s conviction. At least one saw Trump Tower in Manhattan outdoors Friday morning and elected officials, adding Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He shared the symbol online on Thursday.
The symbol, once a sign of misery for sailors, has the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. The symbol was also seen outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in Virginia, even though Alito said it was a dispute between his wife and his neighbors.
Other incendiary rhetoric on social media called the verdict a declaration of “war” or a sign of a “civil war” approaching. The words “RIP America” trended on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the verdict.
Donald Trump’s crusade said it raised a record $34. 8 million in small online contributions from his secret cash conviction, nearly double its previous highest.
“Just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our virtual fundraising formula was defeated with support, and despite transitory online delays due to heavy traffic, President Trump raised $34. 8 million from small donors,” Trump campaign’s senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement.
Fundraising emails used harsh language, “I’m a political prisoner” and “JUSTICE IS DEAD IN AMERICA!”
Campaign advisers said about 30 percent of Thursday’s donors were new to the fundraising platform.
Dozens of reporters and television crews piled up in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan ahead of the former president’s post-sentencing remarks scheduled for 11 a. m.
It’s the same 1980s brass and pink marble entrance where Donald Trump descended his gilded escalator to announce his 2016 crusade years ago next month.
Five American flags have set up a small lectern where he will speak.
The conviction of Donald Trump in his secret trial in New York is a stunning development in an already unorthodox presidential election, with profound implications for the judicial formula and for American democracy itself.
But in a deeply divided United States, it’s unclear whether Trump’s standing as a convicted felony user will have any effect on the 2024 election.
Trump remains in a competitive position against President Joe Biden this fall, even though the former Republican president now faces criminal sentencing in the run-up to the November election.
At least in the short term, there were immediate symptoms that the unanimous guilty verdict was helping to unify the GOP’s disparate factions, as GOP officials in Congress and in state capitals across the country mobilized their presumptive presidential nominee, as their crusade hoped to take advantage of a flood of new fundraising dollars.
Several Republican lawmakers reacted furiously Thursday to Trump’s conviction and rushed to his defense, questioning the legitimacy of the trial and the way it was conducted.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said it was a “shameful day in American history” and called the allegations “purely political. “
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been one of Trump’s most common allies, said, “This verdict says more about the formula than the allegations. “
And while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell refrained from attacking the jury’s ruling, he said the fees “should never have been filed in the first place. “
Many Republican lawmakers, Johnson added, have gone to court in New York to denounce Trump in his trial as a criminal.
Donald Trump would have possibly been convicted of a felony and lives in Florida, a state known for restricting the right to vote for felons, but he can still vote while he remains out of prison in New York state.
This is because Florida is subject to other states’ disenfranchisement regulations for citizens convicted of crimes committed out of state. In Trump’s case, New York law only takes away their right to vote when they are incarcerated. Once released from prison, their rights are restored. Even if they’re on probation, under a 2021 law passed by the state’s Democratic legislature.
“If a Floridian’s voting rights are restored to the state of conviction, they are restored under Florida law,” Blair Bowie of the Campaign Legal Center wrote in an article explaining the state of the law, noting that other people without Trump’s legal remedies are confused. . Florida’s complex rules.
Donald Trump’s conviction Thursday on 34 counts marked the end of the former president’s historic silent trial.
Now comes sentencing and the prospect of a criminal sentence. A lengthy appeals procedure may follow, especially since Trump’s legal team has already set the bar for an appeal.
And in the meantime, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee still faces three more criminal cases and a crusade that may lead to his return to the White House.