BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Former President Donald Trump rained criticism down on his adversaries here just hours after he was arraigned in federal court in Miami.
The playbook — play defense by going on offense — is now familiar for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But the gravity of his legal imbroglio is growing more apparent even as he maintains a dominant lead over his GOP challengers.
In a Miami courtroom closed to news cameras, Trump signed a bond document Tuesday that prohibits him from discussing his case with certain witnesses — an unusual anti-witness-tampering provision added by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman that the prosecution hadn’t sought.
He now faces trial in state court in New York City on charges related to hush money payments to a porn star and a 37-count indictment in the Miami federal court that charges he kept classified documents and hid them from authorities. He is being investigated in a separate federal case involving his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and a Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state.
None of that has stopped Trump from portraying himself as a victim rather than a perpetrator. On Tuesday night, he leaned harder into his narrative that he is being targeted unfairly — and undemocratically — by political enemies bent on stopping his agenda.
“I did everything right, and they indicted me,” he said, speaking at a brick home once owned by automotive executive John DeLorean that sits on the property of his golf club here.
Throughout his roughly 30-minute address, Trump painted the charges as indicative of a double standard and a plot to kneecap his presidential bid, describing the indictment as “the most evil and heinous use of power” in history.
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Among those gathered here in Bedminster were former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Jim Marchant, the failed Nevada secretary of state candidate now running for the Senate.
Trump’s team is reluctant to admit that anything is wrong, and it pushed back against several reports leading up to his initial appearance in federal court that attorneys licensed to practice law in the Southern District of Florida refused to work with him.
“That’s total B.S.,” said a Trump aide familiar with the deliberation. “It’s not going to be long before you see [court filings] listing new attorneys.”
The person said Trump had a number of attorneys to choose from and that he would do so in the coming days.
There have been multiple reports that a handful of attorneys, including prominent South Florida attorney David Markus, declined to work with Trump.
Among the attorneys he interviewed was Ben Kuehne, a Miami-based trial attorney, who didn’t reply to a request seeking comment to his cellphone.
Trump was represented in court by well-known Florida attorney Chris Kise — the state’s former attorney general, who joined his legal team last year and previously worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s chief 2024 rival — as well as attorney Todd Blanche.
On the trip to court from the Trump National Doral resort, he “was just kind of focused on what needed to happen at court,” the Trump adviser said. “There was nothing really out of the ordinary, in the sense that he was focused on what he needed to be.”
Between the day’s highly publicized bookends, Trump nodded to the political aspect of the moment by stopping in at Versailles, an iconic Cuban American restaurant and bakery, and greeted supporters.
But as Trump campaigns for another term in the White House, he can’t escape the prospect that he could end up with a term in prison. In court Tuesday, Trump spoke no words — his attorney entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf — and sat, at times, with his arms crossed and his jaw set.
By the time he appeared onstage in New Jersey, Trump was clearly in combat mode.
“A sitting president had his political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges in which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty right in the middle of a presidential election, which he is losing very badly,” Trump said, adding that the effort was an attempt to “steal” a presidential election, as he falsely insisted happened in his last loss.
Attendees echoed Trump and said they were both impressed and excited that he was fighting the charges and pressing forward with his campaign rather than folding.
“I continue to be unbelievably impressed by the fortitude and the strength that he shows when the odds are against” him, said Andrew Mulvihill, a developer who is a member of the New Jersey State Board of Education. “I was happy to hear today that even if he’s convicted, he could still run. If he actually goes to jail, he could still run.”
Larry Steinhouse, a real estate investor from eastern Pennsylvania, said he made the trip up to Bedminster to hear a former president he described as “exciting” and whose personal arc he has followed closely since childhood.
“He came in and he risked his career,” he said of Trump’s presidency. “He’s continuing to risk his career, even his freedom.”
So far, Trump has faced little criticism from fellow Republican candidates. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is seeking the nomination, has called the details of the indictment “devastating,” and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has urged Trump to drop out of the race.
But most of the contenders either side with Trump or are averse to getting crosswise with the party base.
Trump holds a 30-percentage-point lead — 52% to 22% — over DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. No one else is in double digits.
Asked about rival campaigns’ quietly discussing the idea that the federal indictment or separate legal troubles could derail his bid, the Trump adviser said, “Yeah, we hear it.”
But Trump isn’t listening to that.
“The idea of not continuing to run or being able to has never crossed his mind. Not once,” the adviser said. “We hear it, but that’s it.”
Allan Smith reported from Bedminster, Matt Dixon reported from Tallahassee, Fla., and Jonathan Allen reported from Miami.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
