OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump spoke to reporters before a hearing in his hush money case involving adult star Stormey Daniels and he was furious.
The former president said he believes that there is no case and that it is based on politics with involvement from President Joe Biden’s White House, though there is no evidence of that.
“It’s not a crime. This is not a crime. And when you look at what’s going on outside the streets where violent crime is at an all-time high. I think it’s a very, very — it’s a great double standard. The other thing, this case could be brought three years ago. There is no case. They decided not to bring in the district attorney. Bragg didn’t want to bring it. He said he doesn’t want to bring this case. But it’s not a crime. We’re here for something that is not a crime. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” the former president said.
“What it is is election interference. It’s being run by Joe Biden, his White House. His top person was placed here in order to make sure everything goes right. This is a terrible time for our country. This is a real dark period for our country. His top person called Angelo and some others have been placed into the DA’s office to make sure they do a good job of election interference. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country,” he said.
“With all of this being said, I look outside, I look at history. It’s so different from when I left New York. It’s so different. It’s dirty and it’s crime ridden. And today you walk down the street, you get mugged or you get shot. And they are doing this where literally legal experts, legal scholars said they don’t understand that there’s no crime and there was no crime here at all,” he said.
“This is just a way of hurting me in the election because I’m leading by a lot. We’re leading by numbers that nobody’s ever seen before, and they figure this is their way of cheating this time. Last time, they had a different way. This time, they have something that’s really down and dirty that, no, frankly, no country does other than a third world country, a banana republic. So we’re going to do our process. They want to rush it because they want to get it desperately before the election come back in because before the election, that’s what they want to do. They don’t care,” the former president said.
“After the election, they wouldn’t have brought this except for the fact. No way. Except for the fact I’m running for president and doing well. If I were doing poorly, they wouldn’t have brought it. And frankly, if I didn’t run, they would have been extremely happy because they don’t like me running and they don’t like the numbers,” he said.
CNN legal analyst Ellie Honig fact checked the former president right after he spoke to reporters.
“So first of all, we have to address the tired and tiresome claim that this is all coming out of the Biden White House. This is a state case. There’s zero evidence whatsoever that [President] Joe Biden or the administration had anything to do with this prosecution,” he said.
“Second of all, Donald Trump said, “This is not a crime.” There’s a fair debate about how serious this is, but this is a crime if proven as alleged in the indictment. There’s some question about whether it would be just a misdemeanor, falsification of business records, or a higher level felony. But under any reasonable construction, if proven, this is a crime,” the legal analyst said.
“And the third thing Donald Trump said that I noted is he said there’s absolutely no case here. This is a debatable case. It will be tried to a jury, but this is a case that has a good faith basis. There’s a basis of fact in the indictment. It will be up to a jury,” he said.
