Former President Donald Trump recently debated that the civil fraud case being brought against him was unconstitutional and lamented that he has “no rights” in a rant outside of the courtroom ahead of closing arguments in the trial on Thursday via Mediate.
“It’s election interference at the highest level, which raised is a disgrace. It’s in coordination with the White House and Joe Biden cause he can’t win a campaign fairly. And we’re going through it, but it is indeed a terrible witch hunt,” began Trump.
Trump in NY court today: “It's a very unfair trial…I have no jury. I really have no rights. Nobody thinks it's constitutional."
The only thing Trump is good at is whining. pic.twitter.com/6kXLLOIfFS
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 11, 2024
He continued:
“As you know, I want to speak, I want to make this summation. At this moment, the judge is not letting me make this summation because I’ll bring up things that he doesn’t want to hear. And it’s a very unfair trial, nobody’s seen anything like this. I don’t think they’ve ever seen anything like this. We have a situation where a statute was used that doesn’t give me a jury. So I have no jury, I really have no rights, and it’s sad. And nobody, nobody thinks it’s constitutional people. Legal scholars are writing about it like it’s something they’ve never seen before. So it’s interference, it’s political interference, and it’s something that shouldn’t be allowed.
So I am hoping to speak and to help my lawyers reveal all of the defects of this case. It should have never been brought. Very, very strong financial statements, they thought it was the opposite. They had no idea [unintelligible]. Then they saw them, knocked their socks off. You couldn’t believe it, but great financial statements, everything is good. So we have a level of detail in our defense that nobody’s ever had. This is a case that should have never been brought, and it was brought, and it’s very unfair and it’s very bad for New York State.
Companies are fleeing, people are fleeing, the streets are crime-ridden. And Letitia James, that’s all she thinks about is ‘Get Trump.’ She’s been dreaming about it for years. And it’s, you know, it’s not the way the state should be run, because it’s a state that’s been in big trouble. We have all the businesses fleeing, and you have the people fleeing, the people that pay taxes. The people that don’t pay taxes are coming in. So that’s not what you want.
So I want to thank you. We’re going to have a news conference today, we don’t know the time, we’ll notify you, but sometime in the early afternoon at 40 Wall Street. So we’ll give a news conference where we can actually speak and have a microphone here, because even that they don’t want us to have and they really don’t want us to speak too much. So we’ll see whether or not the judge allows me to speak. Perhaps he won’t, but I certainly would like to. Thank you very much.”
Trump has been banned from personally making a closing argument at his New York civil fraud trial on Thursday because he would not agree to limitations on what he could say, a judge told the former president’s lawyer in a new letter.
Judge Arthur Engoron has told Trump’s lawyer Chris Kise on Wednesday that because he had not heard back from Kise agreeing to terms the judge imposed on Trump, Engoron assumed Trump would not comply. Engoron also denied a bid by Trump to postpone closing arguments by nearly three weeks because Trump’s mother-in-law died Tuesday.
