'Have to save our country...' Donald Trump in first speech after being charged in New York

In his first address after being charged in court, former US President Donald Trump claimed he was the target of election meddling and attacked New York district attorney Alvin Bragg for filing charges against him. After arriving by plane from New York, Trump gave a speech to a gathering of about 500 people in the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

At his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump told his fans, "I never imagined anything like this could happen in America. "The only crime that I've committed has been to fearlessly defend our nation against those who seek to destroy it," he said.

"We need to save our nation. This is not the proper course of action. The entire world is already making fun of us for things like our open borders and abandoning millions of dollars' worth of weapons in Afghanistan," according to Trump.

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"This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 elections, and it should be dropped immediately," he added. "Now, there's massive election interference at a scale never seen," he said.

During his speech, Trump also listed several of his grievances against the current administration.

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from three pre-election hush-money cases. He pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, as Manhattan prosecutors accused him of orchestrating payments to two women before the 2016 US election to suppress publication of their sexual encounters with him. The former president was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last week in a case stemming from a 2016 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. 

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• Donald Trump
• New York
• Stormy Daniels
• hush money case