Former President Donald Trump laid into Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James after leaving a Lower Manhattan Court on Wednesday, the third day of his civil fraud trial concerning the alleged overvaluation of his assets.
After exiting the courtroom, Trump stopped to address members of the media waiting outside and lamented being "stuck" at the trial rather than campaigning for president. He accused James of coordinating with the Justice Department to keep him off the campaign trail.
"I'm here, stuck here, and I can't campaign. I'd rather be right now in Iowa. I'd rather be in New Hampshire or South Carolina or Ohio or a lot of other places. But I'm stuck here because I have a corrupt attorney general that communicates with the DOJ in Washington to keep me nice and busy, because I'm leading Biden in the polls by a lot," Trump said.
"This is election interference. They made up a fake case, these fraudulent people. And the judge already knows what he's going to do. He's a Democrat judge. In all fairness to him he has no choice," Trump said. "I know this city better than anybody who knows this city. Nobody knows it like I do. He's a Democrat judge out of the clubhouses, he's controlled, and it's a shame. What's going on here is a shame. Our whole system is corrupt. This is corrupt, Atlanta is corrupt, and what's coming out of D.C. is corrupt."
He accused James of wanting "the publicity" from targeting him and his finances because she was running for governor of New York amid the investigation in 2021, a bid that she ultimately dropped after just two months to instead run for re-election as attorney general.
Trump also used the opportunity to blast Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the trial, for valuing his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate at just $18 million, rather than what he claims should be "50 to 100 times more than that."
"The smallest house in Palm Beach is probably worth $50 million. And this is the biggest, the best anywhere in the country. There's nothing like it," he said. "And by the way, my financial documents are valued much less than my actual value, which nobody even knows. But the financial documents that I gave to the bank are much less than my actual net worth."
"They can't be fraudulent because I gave them lower numbers. I'm probably one of the only people ever to seek a loan — I didn't even need the loan, because you see the kind of cash I have. I didn't even need loans," he added.
Trump went on to say he never planned to reveal just how much cash he had due to the success of his private company, but that James' lawsuit forced him to do so. He added that her team had "no case" against him.
Engoron ruled last week that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud while building his real estate empire by deceiving banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.
The trial this week stems from James' lawsuit against Trump, his children and the Trump Organization, alleging that Trump "inflated his net worth by billions of dollars" and said his children helped him to do so.
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
