by Sharon Rondeau
(Apr. 4, 2023) — Following his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday afternoon, 45th President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump posted on TruthSocial video clips from “Your World with Neil Cavuto” in which several legal analysts opined that the 34-count indictment released earlier lacked substance or was otherwise deficient.
Shortly before posting the videos without commentary, Trump offered two observations, the first of which was that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting the case against him, “shut down New York City, brought in 38,000 NYPD officers, and will spend an estimated $200,000,000 of NYC funds, for a totally legal $130,000 NDA.”
The “NDA” refers to the non-disclosure agreement Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2016 proffered to adult-film star Stormy Daniels’s attorney to secure her silence about an alleged affair with Trump which Trump, and at one time, Daniels, deny took place.
Trump claims no wrongdoing associated with the NDA or the reimbursement the Trump Organization made to Cohen, plus extra funds, throughout 2017.
The indictment states that Trump personally “falsified” his company’s records in making the payments to Cohen, although federal prosecutors and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) declined to prosecute when they examined the same or similar allegations.
In 2017, Trump was president of the United States, as the “Statement of Facts” accompanying the indictment states. After the 2016 election, Cohen declared that “Donald Trump’s vast business holdings will be placed into a blind trust with his oldest three children in charge.”
Nine days before he took office, a press conference was held detailing how Trump would separate himself from the businesses he built. ABC News reported:
President-elect Donald Trump announced this morning that he will hand “complete and total control” of his vast business empire to his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and to Alan Weisselberg, a longtime Trump business executive, through a financial trust.
In a long-awaited press conference, Donald Trump Sr. introduced Sheri Dillon, a lawyer at firm Morgan Lewis in Washington, D.C., who he said organized a way to “completely isolate [Trump] from the management of the company.”
Despite Trump’s previous pledge to put his business assets into a blind trust, Dillon said that would not be possible.
Elected in November 2021, Bragg campaigned on a platform of “prosecutorial reform” and an implied promise to pursue investigations into Trump and his businesses after having sued the Trump administration “more than 1oo times.”
“On top of all that,” Trump further commented, “the 9th Circuit Court just awarded me $122,000 — over the $500,000 already awarded, from Stormy ‘Horseface’ Daniels!”
The claim was repeated by Trump’s son Eric on Twitter at approximately the time his father’s arraignment concluded and the Trump entourage planned its return to West Palm Beach, FL.
The Trumps’ claim was confirmed by Newsweek, The Hill and Bloomberg, among other mainstream outlets.
Trump’s second comment reported his departure from LaGuardia Airport en route to his Florida home, where he will address the public beginning at 8:15 p.m.
Update: Trump’s remarks Tuesday night are here.