Trump responds with victimhood, aggression and electioneering to his indictment

Former US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is the victim of persecution by a "lunatic" president who has made the US a "failed nation" and said the criminal charges against him are "interference" to prevent him from reaching the White House again.

His first statement after being booked and criminally charged in a New York courtroom on Tuesday was a combination of victimhood, harsh accusations of Democratic President Joe Biden and prosecutor Alvin Bragg with a dose of electioneering.

Trump returned to Palm Beach (Florida) from New York in his Boeing 757 at the end of his court proceedings and shortly afterwards was speaking to an audience of some 400 family members, politicians and supporters in one of the halls of his Mar-a-Lago mansion.

"I never thought anything like this would happen," began the 76-year-old former president, who aspires to be elected as the Republican candidate for the 2024 elections to return to the White House.

Trump repeated his unfounded theory that he was the victim of fraud in the 2020 election and painted a bleak picture under the presidency of Biden, whom he said he and his administration have done more "damage" to the US than the five worst presidents in history.

"A failed nation", "America is going to hell", "everyone is laughing at us" are some of the phrases with which he described the debacle that he attributes to Biden, to later say that if he reaches the White House again he will make the US a "great power".

The speech, which lasted 25 minutes, was interrupted on several occasions by applause and cheers from the audience, which included politicians such as Marjory Taylor Douglas as well as a group of cyclists called "Bikes for Trump" and his family, of whom he said he is "wonderful" and has gone through "hell" due to the persecution of which he says he is a victim.

Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, to which he pleaded not guilty before Judge Juan Merchan.

In 245 years of US history, there had never before been a former president who had been criminally charged.

"This baseless case was made to interfere in the 2024 elections and should be dismissed immediately," he said in his statement.

As Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who was along with Biden the target of the former president's ire, explained, Trump was indicted for allegedly orchestrating a legal scheme to pay the hush money of three people who could damage his 2016 campaign for the presidency, including porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Trump said Bragg is "the only criminal" in this story and should resign and again said financier George Soros is behind the prosecutor's actions.

According to the former president, this case and other open investigations show that "the US justice system is no longer lawless and is being used to win elections".

"The only crime I committed was to defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it," he said.

"He (Bragg) knew there was no case and brought this ridiculous charge. Even the Democrats say there is no crime here and these charges should never have been filed," he stressed.

In one of his numerous mentions of President Biden, he said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was "the most shameful moment in US history" and in another he argued that "President Biden's poor leadership could lead to nuclear war and we are not far from that".

He also lambasted the National Archives, "a far-left organisation", for raiding Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents.

"I openly took them as all presidents have done in the past," he admitted and stressed that "Biden has 1,800 boxes at Delawere that he refuses to turn over".

He also criticised Letitia James, the current New York attorney general, who activated the case over the Trump organisation's finances.

"The US is a mess, Russia has teamed up with China and Saudi Arabia with Iran, that would never have happened with me as president, even the Ukraine war wouldn't have happened," he said.

"Unbelievably we are now a nation on the road to failure, in decline, and these far-left lunatics want to impeach me We can't allow that," he added.

"We are with a black cloud over our beloved country, I have no doubt that we are going to make America great once again," he concluded.