NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Donald Trump held a news conference at Trump Tower on Friday as his team awaited two big court decisions in New York City, slamming the the barrage of legal cases against him as "fake" and politically motivated.
The former president, 77, stepped in front of the cameras for the noon presser at his eponymous high-rise on Fifth Avenue, assailing all the cases and saying they were thrown at him for "political reasons."
"The DOJ is behind everything," Trump said without evidence, referring to the U.S. Justice Department. "Every one of these cases."
Trump was in court Friday as he and his lawyers attempted to delay sentencing in his hush money criminal case and tried to overturn a $5 million civil verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse and slander against writer E. Jean Carroll.
“I’m running for president, and I have all these cases all of a sudden come,” he said. “And they’re fake cases.”
Trump was successful on one front: On Friday afternoon, State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan ruled sentencing will be pushed back until Nov. 26 in the hush money case. It had been set for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before the election on Nov. 5. Merchan is separately weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds.
Earlier in the morning, Trump was at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, where three judges heard arguments in his appeal of a jury's finding that he sexually assaulted Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996.
The Republican nominee walked in quietly and passed right in front of Carroll, who brought the lawsuit against him, and did not acknowledge or look at her. He reacted at times, such as shaking his head when Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said that Trump sexually assaulted her client. He would tilt his head from side to side periodically but otherwise sat still and mostly alone.
Trump's lawyers say the jury's verdict should be tossed because evidence was allowed at trial that should have been excluded and other evidence was excluded that should have been permitted.
His attorney Will Scharf said testimony from two other women who said Trump sexually abused them should never have been allowed.
“In an unfair and improper effort to buttress E. Jean Carroll’s failed attempt to assault President Trump,” Scharf said.
Kaplan said the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll's claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago.
“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.
Later at the news conference, Trump blasted the verdict in that case, saying he never met, touched or would have had any interest in the woman who brought the lawsuit against him.
“It’s an appeal of a ridiculous verdict of a woman I have never met,” he said. “I have no idea who she is.”
Trump claimed Carroll fabricated the story inspired by a “Law and Order” episode. “It’s so false. It’s a made-up, fabricated story by somebody, I think, initially, just looking to promote a book,” he added.
In that case, the court is unlikely to issue a ruling before the election.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
