Fact-check: Trump’s speech at Trump Tower after his New York felony conviction – Poynter
In remarks from Trump Tower almost nine years after he launched his first presidential campaign there, former President Donald Trump lashed out about his Manhattan trial and sought to defend his record and his character. Trump criticized a judicial gag order and the prosecution that one day earlier resulted in 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records.
As he has since the first of his four criminal indictments, Trump blasted the prosecution as “political interference” and said the outcome was “rigged.” Over the course of 44 minutes, he attacked the trial judge and witnesses, including his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and reiterated his claim that U.S. elections are corrupt.
Trump did not take questions.
He is scheduled to be sentenced July 11 and is expected to appeal his conviction, a process that could last beyond Election Day. But the verdicts mean his schedule could open a bit, allowing him more freedom to campaign because he is no longer in court multiple days a week. Trump has sought to parlay his legal troubles into energy among his voter base, which responded with a cash infusion that the campaign says topped $30 million in one day.
Trump listed grievances that echo those he often shares in campaign rallies. Meanwhile, at the White House, President Joe Biden praised the justice system and its resilience.
“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed” in the Manhattan case, Biden said, adding that Trump was afforded the opportunity to defend himself.
Biden also sought to counter Trump’s narrative, saying “it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict.”
Here is a fact-check of some of Trump’s May 31 remarks at Trump Tower.
“Our elections are corrupt,” Trump said. Trump has falsely described elections as “rigged” at least since 2016. Elections are administered in thousands of local areas nationwide, each with safeguards, making any attempt to “rig” a national vote highly improbable.
Trump said his Manhattan trial was “all done by Biden and his people.” That’s False. The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation began in 2018 before Biden was his party’s presidential nominee. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed the charges in 2023; Trump’s fighting a subpoena lengthened the timeline before trial.
Trump has been critical of Bragg’s hiring of Matthew Colangelo, a former Justice Department prosecutor who, when he worked for the New York attorney general, investigated Trump. It’s common for seasoned prosecutors to move among federal, state and local offices. Reasonable people may question the political wisdom of Bragg’s hire, but it doesn’t prove Biden has directed the Manhattan investigation.
“It’s only a misdemeanor,” Trump said. On its own, falsifying records in the second degree is a misdemeanor. However, the charge transforms into a felony if the person accused is convicted of falsifying business records intending to commit another crime or to aid or conceal a crime committed. The upgrade would make the crimes Class E felonies, New York’s lowest level.
“Now I’m under a gag order” Trump said. He called it a “nasty gag order, where I’ve had to pay thousands of dollars in penalties and fines, and was threatened with jail.” An April 1 gag order bars Trump from talking about witnesses or jurors in the New York case about falsifying business records. Trump has been found in violation 10 times, and fined $1,000 for each violation.
Even if Judge Juan Merchan does hand down a sentence that includes prison time, legal experts say Trump’s characterization of 187 years is a wild exaggeration.
If Trump gets any prison time at all, he would likely be sentenced to serve the sentences for each count concurrently. Legal experts also told PolitiFact that the crime Trump was convicted of has prison time capped at 20 years.
“On a class E felony, which this is, the maximum sentence is four years,” said Cheryl G. Bader, an associate clinical law professor at Fordham University. “The judge has discretion to sentence consecutively on the multiple counts, but I can’t imagine a sentence of more than four years. I also can’t imagine a sentence of four years, and I think any sentence of incarceration is unlikely and would be only a token amount of time to make the point that Trump is not above the law.”
“Bragg didn’t want to bring that,” Trump said of his case. That’s not the full story.
Bragg took office as Manhattan district attorney in January 2022. The next month, two prosecutors who were heading the investigation into Trump’s business dealings resigned.
Days later, Bragg’s office said a new prosecutor had been assigned to lead the case.
But even then it wasn’t clear whether Bragg was pursuing the case against Trump. In March 2022, The New York Times published the resignation letter of Mark Pomerantz, one of the prosecutors who resigned. In the letter, Pomerantz told Bragg he disagreed with his decision not to prosecute Trump and take the case to a grand jury.
Bragg said in an April 7, 2022, statement that the investigation against Trump was continuing.
Trump said the case about business records “was dropped by the highly respected Southern District,” ,a reference to the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York, and the Federal Election Commission. The Federal Election Commission’s general counsel recommended commissioners find reason to believe that Trump engaged in wrongdoing. But the case died after commissioners split on their vote along party lines. Trump also omitted the full story on the actions of the U.S. attorney’s office.
Referring to Cohen without naming him, Trump said, “This was a highly qualified lawyer. … He did work. But he wasn’t a fixer. … Now he got into trouble, not because of me. He got into trouble because he made outside deals and he had something to do with taxicabs, and medallions and he borrowed money.”
In news reports, Cohen has sometimes been called a “fixer,” a term with no formal definition. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to a series of criminal charges. Some of the charges were unrelated to his work with Trump, but they included a campaign finance law breach that implicated Trump.
In announcing Cohen’s guilty pleas, the U.S. attorney’s office for New York’s Southern District wrote that he “caused $280,000 in payments to be made to silence two women who otherwise planned to speak publicly about their alleged affairs with a presidential candidate, thereby intending to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump commented about testimony related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. “I did not attack the Secret Service agent in the front of a car,” he said. “It never happened. It was all made up. And that was proven to be made up. It proved to be a false story.”
Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified before a 2022 congressional committee that when Trump got into the presidential vehicle on the Ellipse, he thought he was headed to the Capitol. When he was told he wasn’t, he grabbed for the steering wheel and a Secret Service agent pulled Trump’s hand away, Hutchinson said, recounting information that she said Tony Ornato, the top White House aide for security, told her when she, Ornato and the agent met afterward. A House Republican report contradicted Hutchinson’s testimony.
“None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about President Trump lunging for the steering wheel of the Beast,” the report stated, referring to the president’s armored limousine.
PolitiFact copy chief Matthew Crowley contributed to this story.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
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