Former President Trump lashed out at the New York judge handling his hush money trial on Monday after his former attorney, Michael Cohen, spent hours testifying.
When asked why several elected officials accompanied him to the courthouse, including Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), and the attorney general of Iowa, Trump replied, “They think it’s a terrible thing that is happening to democracy in this country. We have a lot of them, they want to come. I say, just stay back and pass lots of laws to stop things like this.”
Trump then read for about five minutes from a document containing commentary from Republican lawmakers, legal pundits, and cable television commentators who expressed skepticism about the case or defended him. He cited figures such as Vance, Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy, Fox News host Mark Levin, and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen.
“It’s really a very sad day for the country. It’s sad for New York,” Trump said. “We have a corrupt judge, and we have a judge who’s highly conflicted, and he’s keeping me from campaigning. He’s an appointed New York judge. He’s appointed.”
During the closing minutes of Cohen’s testimony on Monday, Trump was seen making edits to a document, crossing out lines of text and making additions. This document was on top of the stack of papers from which Trump read in the hallway.
Monday marked a face-to-face encounter between Trump and Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness in a case that charges Trump with falsifying 34 business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen sent to a porn actor to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with the then-2016 candidate. Despite their past animosity, Cohen’s first day of testimony was more subdued than expected.
Trump is under a gag order preventing him from commenting on witnesses, and the judge last week directed Cohen to stop speaking publicly about the case ahead of his testimony.
