Trump vows to appeal criminal conviction

WASHINGTON, NEW YORK – AA / AFP

Former US president Donald Trump vowed on Friday to appeal his criminal conviction for falsifying business records, saying that his legal team had several grounds to challenge the verdict handed down by a New York jury.

“We’re going to be appealing this scam… on many different things,” said Trump, who is seeking reelection in November polls, in a rambling speech.

“We are going to be appealing this scam. We’re going to be appealing it on many different things; you wouldn’t allow us to have witnesses, you wouldn’t allow us to talk, you wouldn’t allow us to do anything. The judge was a tyrant,” he said.

Donald Trump was found guilty Thursday of all 34 charges related to his hush money trial by a New York jury, making him the first former US president to be convicted of criminal criminal charges.

– Attacks ‘fascist state’ –

Trump went on a meandering and at times contradictory 42-minute diatribe in which he maintained that the “rigged” case was politically motivated by his successor, President Joe Biden, telling his supporters, “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”

“I’m the leading person for president and I’m under a gag order, by a man that can’t put two sentences together, given by a court and they are in total conjunction with the White House and the DOJ just so you understand,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and the first former president in history to convicted of felony charges, said at his eponymous New York tower.

He was referring to the Justice Department, which he said is part of “a fascist state.”

“This is all done by Biden and his people, and maybe his people, more importantly, I don’t know if Biden knows too much about it. Because I don’t know if he knows about anything. But he’s nevertheless the president. So we have to use his name,” he added.