Former President Donald Trump addressed reporters on the first day of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case against him and said “businesses are fleeing New York” because of James, and “anybody that does business” in the state is “crazy.”
Trump appeared in court Monday for the first day of James’ civil fraud trial against him. The former president gathered reporters and criticized the court’s proceedings, Judge Arthur Engoron, and James.
Trump claimed that businesses are leaving New York due to James and said, “anybody that does business in New York State is crazy.”
He said:
And you ought to go after this attorney general because she’s turning off everybody from coming in. You know, I don’t know if you take a look at the outflow of business. Businesses are fleeing New York because of horrible, horrible attorney generals and judges like we have.
“Anybody that does business in New York State is crazy,” Trump declared.
At various times before the proceeding began, during recess, and at the end of the day, Trump highlighted that James campaigned to prosecute him.
“When you have a radical left attorney general like Letitia James, who’s a disgrace to our country, who got elected on the fact that she’s going to ‘take down President Trump, we’re going to take him down.’ She knew nothing about me. But she got elected on that basis,” he added.
“Take a look at Jack Smith. Take a look at these people. This is called election interference, and worse than that, really much worse than that. And you don’t get much worse than election interference, especially [when] we’re talking presidential election of 2024,” Trump said.
As Breitbart News reported, “In 2018, when James was elected, the Washington Post noted that she had run on promises to punish Trump. And while other Democrats in other states had done the same, New York was the “most important” jurisdiction.”
Trump also labeled James as a “racist attorney general,” as he has previously done.
“This is a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time,” Trump said, adding, “We have a racist attorney general who’s a horror show who ran on the basis that she was gonna get Trump before she even knew anything about me.”
“She used this to run for governor; she failed in her attempt to run for governor; she had virtually no polling. She came back, and she said, ‘Well, now I’ll go back to get Trump again.’ And this is what we have. It’s a scam. It’s a sham,” Trump said.
Trump said James’ case against him is the latest example of “election interference.”
Trump said:
Again, there was never a default. It was never a problem. Everything was perfect. There was no crime. The crime is against me because we have a corrupt district attorney. And we have a corrupt attorney general. And it all comes down from the DOJ that totally coordinated this in Washington because I’m the leading candidate, and I’m leading Biden by ten points. And I’m leading the Republicans by 50 and 60 points; that’s pretty much, they say, over. I never accept that, but they say it’s over. This has to do with election interference, plain and simple. They’re trying to damage me so that I don’t do as well as I’m doing in the election. Our country’s gone to hell. We have a country that’s in decline, serious decline. We have a man running our country who has no clue, doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Trump is expected to be present on Tuesday for the second day of the trial, Fox News reported.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.