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 Georgia and Washington D.C.
“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 explained as he opened his wide-ranging address.
“From the beginning the Democrats, spied in my campaign remember that. They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations. Russia, Russia, Russia. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Impeachment hoax No. 1, impeachment hoax No. 2, the illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago right here,” Trump said.
But Trump reserved his harshest 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,” Trump said.
He then turned to attack 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 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. Smith is investigating Trump for efforts to overturn the election before and during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He is also probing Trump’s handling of classified documents, which Trump zeroed in on.
“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 hey 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.