“The only crime I've committed was defending America from those who want to destroy it. My indictment is an insult to the United States."
Donald Trump unleashed after being the protagonist of an unprecedented day in US history: for the first time a former president ended up under criminal investigation and technically under arrest .
The former tenant of the White House gave himself up in the highly armored Manhattan court to hear the 34 charges against him in the Stormy Daniels case. Prosecutor Alvin Bragg charged him with an attempted "conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election" by buying the silence of the porn star, former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman who threatened to reveal an alleged illegitimate child of his.
The Donald, after swinging left and right on social media, entered the Palace of Justice from the back for the usual protocol, without TV in the courtroom (prohibited by the judge) but with an authorized handful of photographers who immortalized him on the bench of the defendants .
First he went up to the seventh floor for fingerprints, then to the fifteenth for the reading of the 34 charges. «Not guilty», declared the former president, ready to transform the future trial already set for January 2024 into a political arena, convinced that it will help him mobilize the base and win the Republican nomination for the White House .
He then returned to his Mar-a-Lago bunker and from there harangued his supporters gathered in one of the resort's lounges . A speech lasting just over half an hour , during which the tycoon - who was spared the handcuffs and the mug shot he wanted to use as an election poster - appeared tried and less combative than usual.
However, he has not given up on launching the usual attacks against his accusers and the "corrupt judicial system, which has now become illegal" , despite the warning from the New York prosecutor not to incite violence. “I never thought something like this could happen in America,” Trump said, as his supporters yelled “Usa, Usa!”.
On stage with the former president were his sons Eric and Donald jr, while his wife Melania, who also accompanied him to Manhattan, and his daughter and former councilor, Ivanka, were absent. After reiterating that all the investigations against him are "political persecutions" , the tycoon covered the prosecutors involved with insults one by one : from Bragg, "paid by George Soros", to Letitia James to Jack Smith, engaged in the investigation into the top secret papers brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, which he called a "crazy". All, according to the former president, are tools of the "radical left" who have the goal of "stopping him at any cost" .
Then he moved on to attack Joe Biden and his former opponent Hillary Clinton for email gate. "He wants a third world war," Trump thundered against the American president, arguing that "when he was a senator, he screwed up all sorts of things but no one arrested him."
Before taking the stage at his resort , the former president had reiterated for the umpteenth time that, in the case for which he was indicted in Manhattan, "nothing was done illegally" accusing Bragg "of having closed New York, mobilized 38,000 agents and spent $200,000 of city funds on a $130,000 legal non-disclosure agreement. It is a "farce" investigation, Trump had attacked in a phone call with his supporters returning from New York, assuring his supporters that "we have been winning for eight years and will continue to win".
(Unioneonline/D)