Former President Donald Trump on Monday slammed the Manhattan prosecutors who led the “hush money” criminal case against him.
He took aim at Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate. He is a former Justice Department official under President Biden’s administration and previously worked in the office of New York State Attorney Letitia James.
“Colangelo is a radical leftist.” [prosecutor] “It’s from the Department of Justice, who worked for Letitia James and was put into the state and then into the district attorney’s office to try the case against Trump,” the 77-year-old Trump said at a press conference after the hearing in the case. I was furious.
“This was all led by Biden.” [sic], meaning Biden and his thugs, because I don’t know if he knows he’s alive. And what’s happening to our country is shameful,” Trump said.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is handling the case, declined to comment.
Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, announced he would hire Mr. Colangelo at the end of 2022 as part of a team investigating the former president.
Mr. Colangelo worked as a senior Labor Department official in the Obama administration before moving to the Justice Department as an acting associate attorney under the Biden administration, where he helped oversee the civil, civil rights, antitrust and tax divisions.
While working in James’ office, Colangelo helped lead a civil fraud case against Trump that ultimately resulted in a Manhattan judge awarding a $454 million judgment against him last month.
In his rant, Trump pointed out that Bragg had chosen not to pursue an investigation into his business dealings that was launched under former prosecutor Cyrus Vance.
Instead, after Mr. Bragg took office, the office pursued a hush-money investigation that ultimately brought 34 charges against Mr. Trump last year. The case is currently scheduled for trial on April 15th.
Mr. Bragg reportedly decided to avoid possible business fraud charges against Mr. Trump and instead have Mr. James file a civil suit against him in that regard.
The decision drew anger from some staffers, including chief attorneys Mark Pomerantz and Carrie Dunn, who resigned in February 2022. Pomerantz has since gone public with his frustrations.
“There’s Mark Pomerantz,” President Trump told reporters. “He was either Hillary Clinton’s lawyer or the Democratic National Committee’s lawyer.” He went in and took over — no one had ever seen anything like that — and they wouldn’t do what he wanted.”
Allegations of hush money payments were the initial trigger for an investigation launched in 2018 under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Mr. Vance.
Mr. Bragg’s office falsified business documents to hide payments made by Mr. Trump to several people, including former porn actress Stormy Daniels, to eliminate negative talk leading up to the 2016 election. He blames it.
Trump’s campaign had sought to delay the trial, but a Manhattan judge on Monday agreed with prosecutors to set an April trial start date.
“We strongly believe that starting this trial in April, or at any point before the election, would be completely unfair to President Trump. It’s completely unfair to the people,” President Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said at a news conference.
President Trump faces a total of 88 criminal charges across four separate criminal indictments, all of which he denies wrongdoing and maintains his innocence.
The 45th president further believed that Democrats would have to take him to court because they would not be able to defeat him at the voting booth.
“We can’t win this election because of borders, energy prices, inflation, and Afghanistan. This is the worst and most embarrassing day in our nation’s history,” Trump said.
“[Biden] We can’t win because of Russia… because Ukraine is being attacked by Russia. And he can’t win because of the October 7th attack on Israel, which should never have been allowed. ”
The Biden campaign wasted little time attacking Trump.
“Donald Trump is weak and desperate, both as a man and as a presidential candidate. He spends his weekends playing golf, spending his mornings comparing himself to Jesus, and his afternoons telling people he has money he will never have. He was lying,” Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson James Singer scolded.
“America deserves better than a weak, confused, and exhausted Donald Trump.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton
