Donald Trump on Thursday went into a falsehood-filled and rambling speech that attacked his criminal conviction in New York — and CNN cut away to fact-check it live.
“A whole bunch of lies here,” CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale said during the fact-check.
Among the inaccuracies:
• Trump claimed “Biden and his people” were behind the trial and his conviction on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The reality: There is no evidence that the White House or the Justice Department worked in conjunction with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is a local office separate from federal prosecutors.
• Trump claimed the presiding judge in his trial, Juan Merchan, didn’t allow the defense to use an election expert. The reality: Merchan limited the scope of the testimony, saying campaign finance expert Brad Smith couldn't opine on whether Trump broke the law, or analyze federal election law. The defense ended up not calling on Smith to testify.
• Trump claimed crime in New York City is at levels no one has seen before. The reality: Overall crime is actually down from last year — and much less than in 1990, when, for example, there were 2,605 murders. There were 391 murders in 2023.
• Trump claimed his former attorney Michael Cohen, who testified against him in the trial, was convicted for matters that were unrelated to him. The reality: Cohen was convicted and spent time in prison for tax evasion, but he was also convicted and sentenced for campaign finance offenses related to Trump’s hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels — the crime that led to Trump’s conviction Thursday.
