WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers are taking turns supporting former president and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in his trial in Manhattan criminal court where he is accused of covering up payments to silence porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election .
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is equally dressed in navy suits and red ties and is seen as 2024 vice presidential candidateFormer Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida lined up behind Trump in the courtroom Tuesday morning. after to reporters present. Outside, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, held a news conference.
The entourage was followed by appearances on Monday by U.S. Sens. JD Vance of Ohio, another contender on Trump’s vice presidential ticket, and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, as well as Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, and an appearance last week by U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
Tuesday’s show of solidarity came as star prosecution witness and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen took the stand for a second day testify that Trump has deregistered for falsifying the refund to Cohen of $130,000 of his own money that Cohen paid to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.
Jurors again saw checks signed by Trump and heard from Cohen about instructions from Trump associates to submit bogus invoices for “legal services rendered.” Cohen also described an Oval Office meeting in February 2017 in which he discussed the refund with Trump. after to reporters at the courthouse.
New York does not allow courtroom recordings but does make them publicly available Transcripts of the procedure.
Cohen followed with high caliber and detail statement last week from adult film actress and director Daniels about her alleged sex affair with Trump in 2006, an incident he denies.
Trump faces 34 felony charges for each alleged falsified business document related to his repayment to Cohen – 11 invoices, 11 checks and 12 accounting entries.
A “deception” to “keep him away from the election campaign”
Out on the sidewalk: Johnson – second in line to the presidential line of succession after the vice president – told He wanted to show reporters “what a travesty of justice is.”
With a sarcastic chuckle and a gesture toward the New York County Supreme Court location on Center Street in Lower Manhattan, Johnson lamented that he had to speak to the media outside “because the court doesn’t allow us to speak in the building.” This is just one of many things that are wrong here.”
It’s worth noting that surrogates routinely make comments outside of courthouses.
Johnson called what he called a “sham trial” a conspiracy to hamper Trump’s re-election campaign, despite recent New York Times/Siena College polls show The former president led in several swing states.
“This is the fifth week that President Trump has been in court for this sham trial,” Johnson said. “They’re doing this intentionally to keep him here and keep him off the campaign trail, and I think everyone in the country can see that for what it is.”
The hearing takes place on weekdays except Wednesdays.
Trump entered the election campaign on Saturday at a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, where he spoke for 90 minutes, criticizing the New York trial, repeating false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, calling the “late, great” fictional cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter “a wonderful man,” and He thanked the six justices of the U.S. Supreme Court – three of whom he appointed – for the case of Roe v. Calf.
“Election interference”
Trump’s allies echoed Johnson’s earlier comments their own There was later a press conference outside the courthouse in which he called the trial a “fraud” and a “joke,” according to reporters at the event.
Ramaswamy reportedly compared the courtroom to a “Kafka novel” and called it “one of the most depressing places I have been in my life” and said the prosecution’s strategy was to “bore the jury into submission.”
In one Video At the press conference he was at
Burgum called the trial “election interference” in the 2024 race. Meanwhile, Trump’s critics say the trial is clearly about election interference in 2016.
Mills said: “What was once the Department of Justice is now the Department of Injustice, which continues to be exploited against the American people.”
The allegations for which Trump is now on trial do not come from the US Department of Justice, but from a New York state grand jury investigation.
The two federal cases against Trump are pending, while the first is pending before the US Supreme Court considered about Trump’s claim to absolute immunity from criminal charges that he planned to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. The second case, which focused on Trump’s alleged misuse of classified documents after his presidency, was stayed indefinitely by Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
The trial in New York is expected to continue Thursday with further cross-examination of Cohen by Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.
