Listen: Trump uses sentencing hearing to air grievances about being indicted

Donald Trump repeated a litany of grievances about his criminal prosecution – which resulted in his conviction by a jury – during his sentencing hearing.

The president-elect was found guilty in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, but New York justice Juan Merchan granted him unconditional discharge to avoid a prison term since he won re-election, and Trump whined about the case in a six-minute monologue during the virtual hearing.

"This has been a very terrible experience," Trump began. "I think it's been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system. This is a case that [Manhattan district attorney] Alvin Bragg did not want to bring, and he thought it was, from what I read and from what I hear, that inappropriately handled before he got there, a gentleman from a law firm came in and acted as a district attorney, and that gentleman, from what I heard, was a criminal or almost criminal in what he did. it was very inappropriate. it was a somebody involved with my political opponent, part of the records that we're talking about, they're saying, I just noticed where he said I was falsifying business records."

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"Well, the falsification of business records, as they say, it was calling a legal expense in the books where everybody could see them a legal expense. In other words, that legal fees or legal expense were put down as legal expense by accountants," Trump added. "They weren't put down by me, they were put down by accountants. I didn't call them construction concrete work, I didn't call them electrical work, I didn't call them anything. They called a legal fee or a legal expense, a legal expense, and for this I got indicted. It's incredible, actually."

Prosecutors presented evidence that Trump directed his accountants to falsely and illegal categorize reimbursements to his personal attorney Michael Cohen, who had paid $130,000 to the adult film actress to prevent her from revealing an alleged extramarital affair. Prosecutors alleged that was part of a wide-ranging effort to suppress damaging stories before the 2016 election.

"The top legal scholars and legal pundits in this country, the ones that are quoted all the time on television, that are making their views felt and highly respected," Trump claimed. "People have said everyone, virtually everyone that I know of, I haven't seen any, to the contrary. Not one and not these people are not exactly friends of mine, to put it mildly, but they all said this is a case that should have never been brought. It's an injustice of justice."

"They all said this is not a case that should be brought," he continued. "It's not. think about it: Legal expenses are down as legal expenses, and I get indicted for business records. Everybody should be so accurate. It's been a political witch hunt, it was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and obviously that didn't work, and the people of our country got to see this firsthand because they watched the case in your courtroom. They got to see this firsthand, and then they voted, and I won and got the largest number of votes by far, of any Republican candidate in history and won, as you know, all seven swing states, won conclusively, all seven swing states and won the popularity, the popular vote by millions and millions of votes, and they've been watching your trial, so they understood it."

"I wasn't allowed to use the lawyer client privilege or the reliance on counsel," Trump added. "I had a lawyer that made this deal, and he admitted that, and he was also a totally discredited person. We weren't allowed to use the information from the Southern District [of New York] that totally discredited him. It wasn't allowed to be put in, and that was terrible, unbelievable, and this is a man who's got, uh, no standing. He's been disbarred on other matters unrelated, and he was allowed to talk as though he were George Washington, but he's not George Washington. He shouldn't have been allowed."

The president-elect then reiterated his complaints about a gag order that banned him from publicly commenting on witnesses, jurors and courtroom staff, and for which he was fined repeatedly for violating.

"I'm the first president in history that was under a gag order, where I couldn't talk about aspects of the case that are very important," Trump said. "I guess I'm still under, so probably I won't do it now. I assume I'm still under a gag order, but the fact is that, uh, I'm totally innocent, I did nothing wrong. They talk about business records, and the business records were extremely accurately counted. I had nothing to do with them. Anything that was done by an accountant or bookkeeper who, uh, I think gave very credible testimony and was corroborated by everybody that was asked and with all that's happening in our country today, with a city that's burning to the ground, one of our largest, most important cities burning to the ground with with wars that are uncontrollably going on with all of the problems of inflation and the attacks on countries and all of the horrible things that are going on."

Trump then repeated his false claims about a lawyer on Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, who left the Department of Justice in 2022 to work as a senior counsel to the district attorney, a former colleague in the New York state attorney general's office, where Colangelo had helped investigate Trump's charity and financial practices.

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