Fact Check: Another week, another round of false claims from Trump about his trial

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CNN
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Former President Donald Trump continues to make false claims about his trial in New York.

Trump speaks frequently to media cameras before entering and after leaving the Manhattan courthouse, where he faces charges of falsifying business records.
He peppered his comments in the hallway with inaccurate statements about a variety of subjects — most often about the trial itself.

Here’s a look at four false claims and one misleading claim he made about the trial in his courtroom comments last week. (And here’s a link to our fact check on the court’s falsehoods from last week.)

Trump falsely claimed after leaving court on Thursday afternoon that he was not authorized to testify in his own defense – then acknowledged on Friday morning that he was in fact authorized to testify.

trump counted reporters on Thursday: “I’m not allowed to testify. I’m under gag order. I guess, right? He added, “I am not allowed to testify because this judge, who is totally conflicted, has placed me under an unconstitutional gag order.” He continued to complain that he is “not allowed to speak,” even as others attacked him, and then said again, “Therefore, I am not allowed to testify because of an unconstitutional gag order.”

Facts first: Trump’s claim is false. As he noted the next day, he is allowed to testify at the trial; the decision is entirely up to him. Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order, which strictly restricts his extrajudicial speech, does not in any way prevent him from testifying. The gag order also does not prevent Trump from speaking. He is allowed to speak to the media, speak at campaign events, attack President Joe Biden and other political opponents, and even attack Merchan and Manhattan. district attorney behind the case.

On Friday morning, Trump told reporters as he entered the courtroom: “No, this will not prevent me from testifying. The gag order is not for testifying[ing]. The gag order prevents me from talking about people and responding when they say things about me.” When court proceedings began shortly thereafter, Merchan told Trump he had the “absolute” right to testify and that the gag order “does not prohibit you from taking a position and does not limit or minimize what you can say.”

Instead, the gag order prohibits Trump from three specific categories of speech:

1) Speak publicly or order others to speak publicly about known or foreseeable witnesses, specifically about their participation in the case;

2) Speak publicly or direct others to speak publicly about prosecutors (other than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg), members of the district attorney’s staff and court staff, or family members of any of these people, including Bragg, if these statements are made with the intention of interfering in the case;

3) Speaking publicly or instructing others to speak publicly about jurors or potential jurors.

Trump has repeatedly made the gag order appear much broader than it actually is. He claimed at a campaign rally Wednesday in Michigan that “I shouldn’t even be, I would say, talking to you, because he gagged me” — although the gag order doesn’t actually say anything to prevent him from giving a speech. campaign.

Merchan wrote in the gag order: “The defendant has a constitutional right to speak freely to American voters and to publicly defend himself.”

Trump’s public stance on whether he will testify has varied. After declaring before the trial began that “I am testifying,” he said in a television interview last week that he would testify “if necessary.” Thursday was the first time he publicly stated that he is not allowed to testify.

Trump and bail

Trump said: “New York City is a violent city; became violent with no money bail. I’m the only one who has to post bail.”

Facts first: Trump’s claim is false. Like many other New York defendants whose alleged crimes are non-violenthe I didn’t have to pay bail. After his indictment in 2023, he was released on bail – that is, without having to deposit any money.

Trump had to post $200,000 bail in his separate voter subversion case in Fulton County, Georgia (contributing 10% himself and working with a bail bond company to cover the rest), but his clear suggestion on Friday- fair was that he is being treated exceptionally harshly. In New York. He was released on bail on his two federal criminal cases – one in Washington, D.C., over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and one in Florida over his withholding of confidential documents after his presidency.

Trump’s claim that New York City is “a violent city” is subjective. It’s worth noting, though, that violent crime in the city has plummeted over the past two decades, that the city has long had lower crime rates than many other communities large and small across the country, and that the impact of city reforms New York state’s bail on the city’s recent crime levels is disputed.

Trump continued Friday to complain that the New York trial is preventing him from campaigning. This time, he said, “We were already discounted — months ago, we were discounted to be in Georgia today, where we are doing very well at the polls, by the way. But that’s where we should be. We were supposed to be in Ohio tomorrow and Florida the next day, campaigning, essentially campaigning. So now I have to go through this ordeal day after day.”

Facts first: Trump’s claim that the trial is preventing him from holding campaign events this weekend is false. The trial doesn’t take place on weekends (or Wednesdays), so he was free to campaign wherever he wanted on Saturday and the next day – and he planned to fly to Florida. Trump was scheduled to headline a closed-door event Republican National Committee fundraising luncheon at its Mar-a-Lago club on Saturdayand he was expected at the Miami Grand Prix Formula 1 race on Sunday.

There is no apparent basis for Trump’s claim that he should be in Ohio on Saturday; he plans to visit the state on May 15, another courtless Wednesday. And it’s unclear what his campaign “referred to” internally, but he had never publicly scheduled a campaign event for Georgia on Friday.

Trump held campaign rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, and he had a rally planned for North Carolina the previous Saturday, which was canceled due to bad weather. However, he has regularly declined to visit swing states or hold public events on his non-court days, opting instead to host dinners and meetings at Trump Tower in Manhattan or play golf at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Trump and the ‘advice of counsel’

Trump complained Tuesday that Merchan was not allowing him to invoke the advice he claims he received from lawyers. Criminal defendants sometimes resort to “advice of counsel” to try to demonstrate that they did not intend to break the law.

“Here, I’m not even allowed to say ‘advice of counsel’. This is a new one for me, ‘advice of counsel,’” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom. “When you have a lawyer and he does something or advises you about something, you say ‘advice of counsel.’ He said you are not allowed to say that.

Facts first: Trump’s claim is misleading. He didn’t mention that the reason Merchan won’t allow Trump’s legal team to invoke “advice of counsel” during the trial is that when Trump was asked before the trial whether he would use an “advice of counsel” defense, your lawyers told Merchan he wouldn’t.

An “advice of counsel” defense typically requires the defendant to waive attorney-client privilege. Trump’s lawyers told Merchan before the trial that rather than a “formal” “advice of counsel” defense, Trump wanted to use a different defense in which he would not waive attorney-client privilege but would still “obtain evidence concerning to the presence, involvement and advice of lawyers in relevant events that gave rise to the charges in the indictment.”

Merchan rejected this proposal. He wrote in March: “Allowing the aforementioned defense in this matter would effectively allow the Defendant to invoke the very defense he has stated he will not rely on, without the concomitant obligations that accompany it. The result would undoubtedly be to confuse and mislead the jury. This Court cannot endorse such tactics.”

Therefore, Merchan ruled, Trump could not invoke or even suggest a defense “presence of counsel” at the trial.

Biden and the case

Trump continued to declare that Biden had orchestrated the affair. He said as he left the courtroom on Tuesday: “They put me here for a Biden trial. It’s a Biden trial.”

Facts first: There is no basis for Trump’s claim. There is no evidence that Biden played any role in launching or handling Bragg’s prosecution — and Bragg is a locally elected official who does not report to the federal government. O indictment in this case it was approved by a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

Trump repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, in making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as a senior advisor to Bragg. But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with the decision to hire Colangelo. Colangelo and Bragg were colleagues before Bragg was elected Manhattan District Attorney in 2021.

Before Colangelo worked at the Department of Justice, he and Bragg worked at the same time in the New York State Attorney General’s office, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and financial practices and was involved in several lawsuits against the Trump administration.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this article.