Former President Donald Trump vows to appeal historic conviction in hush money trial during defiant speech

A defiant Donald Trump vowed on Friday morning, the day after he became the first former president found guilty of a felony, to fight his conviction, repeating previous claims that the charges were politically motivated and the legal system was biased against him.

“It was a rigged trial,” he said.

From the lobby of Trump Tower, his flagship property in midtown Manhattan where much of the crime took place, the former president was at times outraged, defiant and mocking. Trump, the Republican nominee for the November presidential election, attacked the trial judge, his former fixer Michael Cohen, the legal system and President Joe Biden.

He also bragged that the conviction had produced a windfall for his campaign, which claimed to have raised more than $34.8 million since the verdict was announced shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday.

“I like those figures,” he said to applause from a crowd of about 100 supporters, including his defense lawyer Todd Blanche and his son Eric Trump. “So far, I guess, it’s backfired. I would rather not have it happen. I want to win legitimately.”

The amount cannot be verified until campaign finance reports are filed in the coming months.

In response to Trump’s criticism of the case, Biden defended the justice system.

“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday.

The president said Trump’s trial followed the same legal guidelines as any other trial and the jury’s decision should be respected.

“Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. It was a state case, not a federal case, and it was heard by a jury of 12 citizens, 12 Americans, 12 people like you,” he said, adding that the former president was free to appeal the verdict.

Trump appeared unbowed by his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records — a low-level felony — which was part of a conspiracy to hide reimbursements to Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment to former adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a one-night stand in a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006. The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged that the payoff amounted to election fraud because it was deliberately hidden from American voters just before the 2016 presidential election.

“We will be appealing this scam,” Trump said. “We will be appealing it on many things. He would not allow us to have witnesses. We were not allowed to talk. The judge was a tyrant.”

Each count carries a sentence of up to 4 years, but for a nonviolent crime for a first-time offender of his age, a hefty prison sentence is unlikely, legal experts say.

A sentencing date has been set for July 11.

Trump in his speech, falsely claimed that Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan barred him from allowing a federal election law witness to testify. The judge only limited the testimony of the expert witness, Merchan said, to avoid confusing the jury.

Manhattan federal prosecutors didn’t want to bring the case, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was convinced to prosecute it.

The former president again called the trial “unfair” and claimed it was “done by Washington.”

Trump targeted Cohen, possibly again violating a gag order, which remains in effect. Merchan already fined him $10,000 during the trial for attacking witnesses and the jurors.

Although he did not mention Cohen by name, he referred to the man who people call his “former fixer.”

“I never thought of him as a fixer,” he said. “He was a lawyer, a fairly good one too. Later on, I did not like what he did. I did not like that when I became president he went around making deals with companies. When I found out about it, he was gone.”

Trump continued to claim that the charges against him were flawed.

“They missed the statute of limitations by a lot,” he said Friday. “Instead of bringing this seven years ago, they brought it during an election.”

Many of the delays in the case were at the request of the defense lawyers.

Trump did not take any questions during or after his address just before noon and ignored reporters’ attempts to ask.

The Friday speech took on the tone of a campaign speech and touched on many of the points in his platform, spending most of the talk railing against illegal migrants and the Biden administration.

“Millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world. Not just from South America, from Africa, from Asia, from the Middle East, coming in from jails and prisons and coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums,” he said. “We have a president and a group of fascists that do not want to do anything about it.”