I’ll still run for president if convicted: Donald Trump

In his first big interview since being arrested and charged Trump tells Fox News nothing would prevent him running in 2024.

Donald Trump has been charged over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Picture: AFP.

Donald Trump has vowed he would “never drop out” of next year’s presidential race, even if he is convicted on criminal charges.

In his first big interview since being arrested and charged in New York, the former president told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson that nothing would prevent him from running. “I’d never drop out,” Trump told Carlson yesterday (Wednesday). “It’s not my thing. I wouldn’t do it.”

Trump faces 34 felony counts over alleged hush money that was paid to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress. She claims the money was paid by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. On Wednesday, it emerged that that the former US president is suing Cohen for more than dollars 500 million, according to a filing in a Florida court. Trump pleaded not guilty last week to charges of falsifying business records to conceal payments made before the 2016 election and has denied Daniels’s claims of an affair.

He claimed that staff and officers at the lower Manhattan courthouse where he was booked were visibly moved by his plight. “They were incredible,” he said. “When I went to the courthouse, which is also a prison in a sense, they signed me in and I’ll tell you people were crying, people that … professionally work there, that have no problems putting in murderers and they see everybody.”

If he wins the Republican nomination, Trump is likely to face President Biden, who said on Monday that he planned to seek re-election, although a formal announcement has not yet been made.

Speaking to NBC News before the traditional White House Easter egg roll, Biden said: “I plan on running, but we’re not prepared to announce it yet.” However, Trump, the 45th US president, cast doubt on whether his successor, who is now 80, would take part in the 2024 race, claiming Biden was not fit to run again. “I don’t see how it’s possible,” Trump, 76, said. “It’s not an age thing … I don’t think he can. I just don’t see Biden doing it from a physical or a mental standpoint. I don’t see it.”

The comments came in the first instalment of a two-part interview.

Melania Trump issued a rare public statement hitting back at “assumptions” made in the media about her absence from her husband’s side after his arrest. The former first lady, 52, did not appear as her husband made a speech at their Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and there has been speculation that she remains angry over the scandal.

Daniels has claimed the affair took place less than four months after Melania gave birth to the couple’s son, Barron, in 2006.

The statement, issued by her office, said: “News organisations have made assumptions about the former first lady’s stance on subjects that are personal, professional and political over the past few weeks. In these articles, unnamed sources are cited to bolster the author’s claims. We ask readers to exercise caution.”

A photograph emerged of the couple having brunch together at the Florida resort over Easter. In a separate development, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who announced the charges against Trump, sued the Republican congressman Jim Jordan to stop what Bragg called an “unconstitutional attack” on Trump’s criminal prosecution.

The lawsuit aims to block a subpoena of Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who at one point led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Trump but who has criticised Bragg’s subsequent handling of the case.

The subpoena, issued last week by the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee, which Jordan chairs, seeks Pomerantz’s appearance before the committee for a deposition.

Pomerantz left his job at the district attorney’s office shortly after Bragg took over in early 2022. He published a book criticising his successor and suggested that the case against Trump over alleged hush money payments would not hold up in court.

In announcing the subpoena of Pomerantz last week, Jordan said Pomerantz’s public statements showed that Bragg’s prosecution of Trump was politically motivated.

Bragg has said Pomerantz’s case was not ready. “If he wishes to argue that his prosecution is ‘politically motivated,’ he is free to raise that concern to the New York state criminal court,” Bragg’s office wrote in the lawsuit.

The Times