Donald Trump uses criminal to win in court of public opinion

Donald Trump denounced the US judicial system, the Biden family and Democrat prosecutors after making history as the first former US president to be indicted for a criminal offence.

Donald Trump outside Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday. Picture: GC Images

An embattled Donald Trump has launched a blistering attack on the US judicial system, the Biden family, and Democrat prosecutors after making history as the first former US president to ever be indicted for a criminal offence, and one now facing potentially years in prison.

Casting himself as a political martyr under siege from “radical left-wing lunatics”, Mr Trump – speaking to supporters at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, after his arraignment in Manhattan earlier on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) – slammed the 34 charges against him as “election interference” and demanded they be “dropped immediately”.

The 45th president and leading contender for the Republican 2024 nomination was formally accused of enacting what New York prosecutors termed an illegal “catch and kill” scheme to snuff out damaging information about his past affairs with a view to boosting his election chances ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“The radical left George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York campaigned on the fact that he would ‘get President Trump’ … at any cost, and this before he knew anything about me,” Mr Trump said, referring to the 92-year-old financier and hate figure among Trump supporters, who had donated $US1m to Manhattan District Attorney Mr Bragg’s political campaign.

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America. The only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” he declared, demanding Mr Bragg, the 49-year-old elected Democrat who has shot to national prominence after clinching the historic indictment, “should be prosecuted (and) resign”.

In his almost 25-minute address, Mr Trump barely mentioned his 2024 campaign, spending the bulk of his remarks defending his removal of classified documents from the White House and his phone call to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election – both subject to separate legal investigations.

Mr Bragg’s indictment, unveiled to the public for the first time after Mr Trump’s arraignment, contained felony charges relating to the former president’s 2016 election campaign, during which prosecutors allege Mr Trump made a series of illegally concealed payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“The defendant Donald J. Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” Mr Bragg’s statement of facts claimed.

It is alleged Mr Trump, along with former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, and David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc – publisher of National Enquirer magazine – conspired to pay hush money to not only Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claimed she had an affair with Mr Trump in 2006, but also former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal and Dinoo Sajudin, a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed Mr Trump had an illegitimate child.

The indictment alleges the payments were made to “conceal another crime” but it does not make not clear what that crime is.

Despite the drama of the arraignment, Mr Trump is not expected back in court until December 4, just weeks before the start of the primaries to decide the next GOP presidential nominee.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges in a case that has polarised Americans, largely along partisan lines, over whether Mr Bragg should have brought the case that most Republicans perceive as a witch hunt against the former president to derail his 2024 election chances.

Republicans, including Mr Trump’s chief rivals such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, have rallied to his support, since the prospect of an indictment first emerged on March 18, ultimately taking place last week.

The small Collect Pond Park opposite the Manhattan courthouse became a microcosm of the national division earlier in the day, as thousands of warring supporters and critics – many waving signs, or holding props – yelled at each other across a barrier a few metres wide patrolled by police.

“Two genders, there are only two genders,” yelled one protester to the similarly sized crowd of anti-Trump supporters, not long after firebrand Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene addressed the crowd, barely audible above the din of drums, whistles and yelling.

Wesley Yu, a Chinese American originally from Wuhan, told The Australian he was there “to show my love for Trump and America”, as he waved a giant blue pro-Trump flag. “Of course, this helps Trump, he will be the nominee in 2024, nobody has the more power and capability than Trump to save America,” he said.

Gregory Williams, 57, standing among the anti-Trump protesters alongside a life-size cardboard cut-out of Hillary Clinton, said he was there to “celebrate” but didn’t expect Mr Trump to ultimately be convicted. “You know what, I don’t really dislike him, I really don’t. I just think that it’s unfair how he can get away with all types of crimes the common man can’t do,” Mr Williams said.

Legal experts panned Mr Bragg’s indictment as “skimpy, skeletal and mistaken”, given the 16-page document didn’t specify the additional crime Mr Trump was alleged to have committed, which would elevate what would normally be misdemeanours – with a two-year statute of limitations – into felonies, which attract stiffer penalties.

In a press conference, Mr Bragg, who campaigned for office promising to pursue Mr Trump, said the charges against the former president were “the bread and butter” of white-collar criminal cases that his office routinely brought.

“True and accurate business records are important everywhere, to be sure. They are all the more important in Manhattan, the financial centre of the world,” he said, batting away demands he ­reveal which additional laws he believes Mr Trump has broken.