Donald Trump has ratcheted up his unfounded claims that his New York hush-money trial was a political hit job, a day after becoming the first former president in United States history to be convicted of criminal charges.
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Speaking at Trump Tower in New York City on Friday morning, Trump delivered a meandering speech in which he portrayed the trial as a “scam” and “rigged”, while telling his supporters they could also be targeted.
“This is case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he told reporters. “These are bad people. These are in many cases, I believe, sick people.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked prosecutors and the judge involved in the case, and has said – without evidence – that the administration of US President Joe Biden was connected to the prosecution.
“This is all done by Biden and his people,” Trump said without providing any evidence.
Trump’s remarks – which oscillated between condemnation of the trial and his now familiar stump speeches – came less than 24 hours after New York City jurors found the former president guilty on all 34 felony counts he faced in his widely watched trial.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office argued that Trump falsified business documents to cover up reimbursements paid to his personal fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen, for hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors said the payments to Daniels – in exchange for her silence over an alleged affair with Trump – were part of a wider scheme to withhold negative information that would have hurt Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential elections, which he won.
They argued that Trump sought “to defraud the voting public”, in violation of New York state law.
The upcoming US presidential election loomed large over the New York trial, and Trump’s conviction could shake up the campaign.
Trump, who is set to face off against Democratic President Joe Biden on November 5, has repeatedly said – without evidence – that the hush-money case was part of a coordinated effort to derail his re-election bid.
Reporting from outside Trump Tower on Friday, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren noted, however, that “Biden didn’t have anything to do with [the case]”.
“This was a New York jury … [Biden] is not in the chain of command of the district attorney of New York. There’s really no way Biden could have intervened in this particular case,” Hendren said.
“But Trump is going to make this a campaign issue. He says the ultimate verdict is going to come in November … and there’s no reason to believe the Republican Party will back off of him. So far the support among Republicans has been near-universal.”
Trump’s allies and top members of the Republican Party have united around the former president in the wake of his conviction, with his son, Donald Trump Jr, referring to his father as a “political prisoner” in a fundraising email.
On Friday, Trump’s 2024 campaign announced what it called its largest single-day, small donor funding haul ever, raking in $34.8m since the verdict was announced.
Many Republicans have echoed Trump in arguing – again without evidence – that his conviction was the result of a politicised judiciary.
Mike Johnson, the staunchly conservative Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, slammed the trial as a “purely political exercise, not a legal one”.
Even those who have more recently sought to distance themselves from Trump, including Texas Senator John Cornyn, called the verdict “a disgrace”.
“Now more than ever, we need to rally around @realdonaldtrump, take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track,” Cornyn wrote on X.
In a brief statement following the verdict, a spokesperson for the White House counsel said, “We respect the law” but added there would be no additional comment.
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