Meanwhile, fundraising continues to skyrocket for the Trump campaign.
Former President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Fox & Friends after his historic guilty verdict and in an excerpt of the interview published June 2, he revealed he would be “OK” handling a prison sentence.
The interviewers noted the timing of the trial and how sentencing could take place July 11, days before the Republican National Convention where President Trump will be officially named the party’s candidate, and said a prison sentence could even come right before his nomination.
“I’m OK with it,” President Trump said.
“I saw one of my lawyers on television the other day saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president,’‘ he added. ”I said, ’Don’t beg for anything.’”
He was likely referring to defense attorney Todd Blanche on a CNN appearance saying a 77-year-old man with President Trump’s record should “never” be sentenced to jail time.
On May 30, a New York City jury returned a guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, making President Trump the first former president convicted of a crime. He has announced he will appeal the case and believes there were many errors that can serve as a basis for overturning the conviction.
Asked about the possibility of house arrest, which would also take him off the campaign trail, President Trump said he didn’t think Americans would accept it.
“I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said.
“I think it would be hard for the public to take,” President Trump added. “At a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”The response President Trump has received after the conviction suggests to him the public sees the case as a “scam,” he added.
“The good news is I think we’ve set a record beyond all records for fundraising—that’s like a poll,” he said. “People get it, it’s a scam.”
Within 24 hours of the guilty verdict, the campaign revealed a record-setting haul of nearly $53 million, with a third of the donors being first-time Trump donors.
On June 2, one of the former president’s sons, Eric Trump, told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that that number has since risen to $200 million, with $70 million of it from small donors.
“They’re turning Donald Trump into a martyr,” Mr. Trump said.
“They’re literally feeding him certain segments of the population that he might not have had in 2016 and 2020, because for the first time they realize that the system’s coming down, that he’s the victim. He’s the victim that oftentimes their communities were.”
“I mean look at the youth vote,” he added.
Mr. Trump said that regular Americans are “coming out of the woodwork and they want to support a guy that they just believe is getting bamboozled by a system.”
“We saw it with impeachment one, we saw it with impeachment two, we see it where they weaponize every liberal DA and AG across the country with one intent: to take him to down, to slander him,” he said. “America sees through it.”
Mr. Trump, who was front row in the courtroom throughout the trial, said it has been like a “tale of two cities.”
In the courtroom, the judge issued several unfavorable rulings for the defense, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sat listening to the verdict the same day a man unleashed a machete attack in Times Square, he said. But when President Trump appeared at at UFC 302 in New Jersey on Saturday in one of his first public appearances since the verdict, the 40,000-large audience exploded into chants of “USA” and “We love Trump.”
“This country loves Donald Trump,” Eric Trump said.
President Trump had sought a venue change to move the trial, and therefore jury selection, out of Democrat-dominated Manhattan. Justice Juan Merchan denied the motion.
“We had probably the worst area in the country for me, in terms of votes,” President Trump said. But, he added, “I’m sure if I sat down and explained it to that section of the world we would probably make progress.”
He noted that his political opponents have tried fundraising off the recent conviction as well, but with “misinformation.”
“It’s like their slogan, I’m a ’threat to democracy,’” he said. “It’s the opposite. They’re the threat to democracy.”
During the Fox & Friends interview, President Trump reiterated arguments that multiple offices had passed on the case ultimately brought by Mr. Bragg. Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute, and the Federal Election Commission declined to pursue charges. According to a tell-all book by Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Mr. Bragg’s office who said he resigned in protest, Mr. Bragg did not want to bring this case either, allegedly citing the poor evidence.
“Think of it, they have all my books,” President Trump added, referring to the five-year lawsuit to obtain his tax returns. “The Supreme Court actually gave it to them. That was the end of it. They never found anything.”