President-elect Donald Trump He criticized the ongoing “legal war” against him in his first public remarks since Congress certified his decisive election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
“They're playing fields, you know, they've been playing fields for four years. They probably got me more votes because I got the most votes any Republican has ever gotten, in fact, by a margin. We had a great election, so I think it didn't It works, but to this day, they're still playing with the courts and they're friendly judges trying to make everyone happy. It's called lawfare, and it's called weaponization,” Trump said Tuesday during a news conference from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump held the press conference, his first since Congress certified his election victory on Monday, to announce that Damac Properties will invest $20 billion in new data centers across the country. Hussain Sajwani, owner of DAMAC, said the investment aims to facilitate the development of artificial intelligence and cloud-based technologies.
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Damac Properties CEO Hussain Sajwani makes remarks next to US President-elect Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US on January 7, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (Reuters)
Trump took aim In his legal battles of the past four years during the speech, he criticized Special Counsel Jack Smith as well as New York Judge Juan Merchan.
“I call it the administration of injustice. What they did was very bad, and the whole world saw it. And it took effort, but it got a lot of votes, because when it was explained, we have a judge in New York.” “He's a very crooked judge,” he said, referring to Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over New York's case against Trump. “I'm under a gag order. I can't even talk about the aspects of the case that are the most important aspects that I'm going to do. You know I'm the president-elect of the United States of America. I'm a very successful former president.”
Merchan announced earlier this month that he would rule on Trump in New York v. Trump on January 10, before his inauguration as president on January 20. Trump's legal authority filed a request to postpone sentencing, which Merchan denied Monday afternoon. .
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“Today, President Trump's legal team moved to stop the illegal ruling in the Manhattan witch hunt. The Supreme Court's historic decision on immunity, New York State Constitution“This baseless hoax and other well-established legal precedent dictate that this baseless hoax be dismissed immediately,” Trump spokesman and incoming White House communications director Stephen Cheung told Fox Digital on Monday morning.
US President-elect Donald Trump delivers remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on January 7, 2025. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters. (Reuters)
“The American people elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that requires an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all remaining witch hunts. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again,” Cheung continued.
Trump has been found Guilty on 34 counts of forgery Business records in the Manhattan case in May. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg worked to prove that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to quell her allegations of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. Trump has maintained his innocence in The case. issue.
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Smith, who led the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents after his first term in the White House, is scheduled to issue a final report on the investigation. Two of Trump's former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, filed an emergency motion on Monday in an attempt to block the report's release.
FILE – Judge Juan M. Merchan stands in his chambers in New York, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wing, File)
“These defendants will suffer irreparable harm as civilian victims due to the government’s impermissible and intentional use of political law, including the publication of the unauthorized report,” Nauta and de Oliveira’s lawyers wrote in an emergency motion filed Monday. “The final report relies on material to which Smith, as a disqualified special counsel, no longer has access – making his attempt to share such material with the public entirely inappropriate.”
The judge presiding over the case blocked Smith's efforts to release the report on Tuesday.
Trump criticized Smith as “unhinged” during his remarks on Tuesday, while praising Victory, whose lawsuits against him since the 2020 election have faded since the 2024 election. Trump has maintained his innocence in the various state and federal cases against him, arguing that they were examples of “war Legal” aimed at obstructing his campaign to regain the White House.
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Jack Smith, US Special Counsel, speaks during a press conference in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, August 1, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I defeated deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged person. I think he's on his way back to The Hague. And we won those cases. Those were the biggest cases. The press made a lot of money out of it. But we didn't do anything wrong in anything, and people saw that, you know Vote on when you go to Republicans,” he said.
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Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom and Brooke Syngemann contributed to this report.
