Donald Trump, former US president, attacked successor Joe Biden saying that the “country is going to hell” hours after being charged over hush money payments to a porn star.
The 76-year-old, who pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts, was addressing his supporters and the media from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America — never thought it could happen,” he said, adding “the only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it”.
Trump — the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination — said from a stage festooned with American flags in an opulent gold-and-cream ballroom that “radical left” prosecutors across the country were out to get him “at any cost.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that Trump engaged in a two-year scheme to boost his 2016 presidential campaign by suppressing negative information and falsifying business records of his company to cover his tracks.
Trump faces a separate criminal probe by a county prosecutor in Georgia into whether he unlawfully tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. He also faces two US Justice Department investigations led by a special counsel into attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
