Former President Trump took to social media on Friday night attacking to the judge who oversaw his secret trial, suggesting that the charges in the case were based on a simple “accounting error.”
“The accounting error for which I am being incorrectly and unconstitutionally sued is the fact that an accountant innocently and correctly called a “Legal Expense” paid to a lawyer a “Legal Expense,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to to the payment he made to former fixer Michael Cohen. “IN EVEN SIMPLER WORDS, I CALLED LEGAL EXPENSES, LEGAL EXPENSES.”
“What the hell would you call that?” he asked. “A [President Biden] INSPIRED ELECTORAL INTERFERENCE HOAX!!!”
The former president, who faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the case, was accused of paying Cohen in reimbursement for a secret payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 for her silence about an alleged affair. Trump denied that the affair ever happened.
“When the disgraceful district attorney and his crooks, WITH FULL APPROVAL, I assume, by the highly conflicted judge, Juan Merchan, and the corrupt administration of Joe Biden, who are leading the trial for the purposes of ELECTORAL INTERFERENCE, continue to talk about the ‘mistake of accounting’ or ‘crime,’ they are referring to the fact that an accountant, without any influence or discussion with me, correctly called the payment to a lawyer a Legal Expense – a Legal Expense,” Trump said. continuous in his Friday speech.
“In other words, I am being sued because an accountant, with whom I had no contact, marked, in a drop-down menu in the ledger, a Legal Expense for a lawyer as ‘Legal Expense’”, he added.
His latest attack on Merchan comes as the trial, the first criminal trial of a former or sitting president, begins to wind down, with both sides resting the case earlier this week. Closing statements are scheduled for next Tuesday and jury deliberations will begin afterward.
Overall, over 16 days of witness testimony, 22 witnesses testified – including Cohen and Daniels.
The former president, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for the White House, also reaffirmed his belief that the case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a political stunt.
“….For this ridiculous accusation, millions of dollars were spent in PERSECUTING a popular president (got more votes than any sitting president in history!), and the current leader in the polls against his Democratic opponent, the corrupt Joe Biden, without which NO CASE WOULD HAVE BEEN CHARGED,” Trump wrote Friday in a separate post.
“Any other judge would not have allowed this SCAM to proceed, and neither DA Bragg nor any other government agency wanted to bring it forward,” he said. “We are fighting a rigged New York ‘justice’ system. WITCH HUNT!”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
