Donald Trump on Tuesday night described his conviction for sexual assault as a ‘scam’ and insisted he was denied a fair trial by a biased Manhattan jury and judge.
The 76-year-old was found guilty of sexual assault of journalist E. Jean Carroll in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s, and defaming her when he said she lied.
He was acquitted of rape in the civil trial, but ordered to pay $5 million in damages.
Trump on Tuesday night published a series of three videos on his Truth Social network condemning the verdict and insisting he would appeal.
‘The whole thing is a scam,’ he said.
‘And it’s a shame, and it’s a disgrace to our country.’
Trump repeated his previous claim that his trial was not fair because it was held in his hometown of New York City, in the borough of Manhattan where he lived for almost all of his adult life.
Manhattan is a staunchly Democrat borough, and the former president is widely loathed in his hometown.
‘What else can you expect from a Trump-hating, Clinton-appointed judge, who went out of his way to ensure the result of this trial was as negative as it could possibly be,’ he asked.
‘Speaking to and in control of a jury from an anti-Trump area, which is probably the worst place in the United States for me to get a fair trial.
‘We’ll be appealing this decision. It’s a disgrace. I don’t even know who this woman is. I have no idea who she is, where she came from.’
Trump said that the trial was just the latest in a long line of politically-motivated attacks on him
Trump’s comments echo those of his attorney, Joe Tacopina, who said outside court on Tuesday that a Manhattan jury was ‘always’ going to rule against Trump.
He has cited the Carroll trial in campaign fundraising emails as evidence of what he portrays as a Democratic plot. He has said Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist and a registered Democrat, made up the allegations to try to increase sales of her 2019 memoir and to hurt him politically.
‘This is another scam. It’s a political witch hunt,’ he said on Tuesday.
‘And somehow we’re going to have to fight this stuff.
‘We cannot let our country go into this abyss. This is disgraceful.’
Source: mypublisher24