Comments On The Indictment Against Him, Donald Trump: I Never Think Things Like This Can Happen In America

Donald Trump. (Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

JAKARTA - Former President Donald Trump has criticized New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who filed a criminal charge against him, claiming himself to be a victim of interference in the general election without providing evidence.

"I never thought anything like this could happen in America," Trump told his supporters gathered at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida.

"The only crime I have committed is without fear to defend our country from those who are trying to destroy it."

Earlier, Trump pleaded not guilty in Manhattan court to 34 counts of business record forgery crimes, as prosecutors accused him of arranging payments to two women before the 2016 elections, to press the publication of their sexual encounters with him.

Trump, who ran for Republican presidential candidate in 2024, on Tuesday night in Florida gave a relatively short, 25-minute speech, compared to speeches at public meetings that sometimes last for two hours.

Despite the condemnation of the prosecutors, he did not call for new protests from his supporters. And, although he is expected to return to campaign channels soon, he did not provide details about it.

Trump further said he was being hunted by his political opponents who used the legal system to fight him, trying to stop him from winning back the White House by 2024.

Trump accused Manhattan District Attorney Bragg of targeting him "before he knew anything about me." He also said the judge in this case, Juan Mercan, was "a judge who hated Trump."

But he did not provide any evidence to support his claims they carried out the move, to weaken his chances of returning to the White House.

On the same occasion, Trump counterattacked various legal cases that befell him, ranging from handling classified documents brought to Mar-a-Lago when Trump moved from the White House in early 2021, an investigation into the attack on January 6, 2021 at the US Congress Building to the election interference case he faced in Georgia in the 2020 elections.

He said the cases were an attempt to thwart the candidacy of all three as presidents, calling them "massive election mixing on an unprecedented scale."