The charges center on a hush money deal with a porn star, but prosecutors also accused the former president of orchestrating a broader scheme to pay off another woman and a doorman during the 2016 campaign.
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Former President Donald Trump said on Tuesday night (GMT), hours after his arraignment, that he was the victim of election interference and he lashed out at New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg for bringing criminal charges against him.
In a rambling 25-minute-long speech, in which he took aim at various prosecutors investigating him on multiple fronts, he said it was “the most embarrassing time in our country’s history”. “I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump told supporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida.
Donald J. Trump, who has weathered two impeachment trials, a special counsel inquiry and decades of investigations, was accused by Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday of orchestrating a hush-money scheme to pave his path to the presidency and then covering it up from the White House.
Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty in the case, which has far-reaching political consequences and opens a perilous chapter in the long public life of the real estate mogul and former president, who now faces the embarrassing prospect of a criminal trial.