Former President Donald Trump recently held a press conference following his conviction in Manhattan for falsifying business records. His speech was filled with numerous false claims about crime rates in New York City, the nature of Michael Cohen’s crimes, and the involvement of President Joe Biden in the prosecution. Fact checks reveal that violent crime in NYC has significantly decreased since the 1990s, Cohen’s conviction involved Trump-related activities, and there is no evidence linking Biden or the federal government to the Manhattan DA’s case.
Former President Donald Trump declared he was running to maintain a press conference on Friday in the path of his Thursday confidence in Manhattan on felony expenses of falsifying enterprise records.
Instead, Trump produced a rambling monologue that was loaded with false declarations on topics ranging from the Manhattan attempt to immigration to tax policy.
Crime in New York City
Trump reiterated his familiar declaration that, while Manhattan prosecutors have been concentrating on him, New York City has been encountering record-high violent crime. He said this time You have violent offence all over this city at stories that nobody’s ever seen earlier.
Facts First: Trump’s declaration is not even near to true. Violent crime in New York City – and damaging crime in Manhattan in particular – has plummeted since the early 1990s and is today nowhere around record levels.
New York City registered 391 murders in 2023, down about 83% from the 2,262 in 1990; 1,455 rapes in 2023, down about 53% from the 3,126 in 1990; and 16,910 thefts in 2023, down about 83% from the 100,280 in 1990.
Michael Cohen’s crimes
Attacking key prosecution eyewitness Michael Cohen, Trump repeated a declaration he made during the test in April. He claimed that Cohen, his ex-lawyer and fixer, got into trouble not because of me but because of outside deals and something to do with cabs and medallions, and he borrowed funds, and that’s why he went. He added that Cohen claimed guilty to campaign finance offences to attempt to get himself a softer penalty.
Trump resumed: He got in problem for a very simple explanation: because he was concerned with borrowing a bunch of money and he did something with the banks – I don’t know, cheated the banks, but something occurred.
Facts First: Trump’s declaration that Cohen got into danger simply because of his non-Trump-related actions, such as those connected to taxis and loans, is not true. First, Cohen’s claim was referred to federal prosecutors in New York by the particular counsel, Robert Mueller, who was assigned to examine any connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Second, Cohen’s three-year jail sentence in 2018 was for numerous crimes, some of which were directly connected to Trump.
Guiding Trump as Individual-1, Cohen said at the time of his 2018 regretful plea for creating false information to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: I made these comments to be compatible with Individual-1’s political messaging and out of commitment to Individual-1. When Cohen begged guilty in 2018 to the movement finance violations, he said he violated the law in coordination and at the recommendation of a prospect for federal office, Trump.
Biden and the case
Trump reiterated his frequent claim that the Manhattan point in which Trump was condemned is all done by Biden and his individuals and in total intersection with the white house and the DOJ, the federal Department of Justice.
Facts First: There is no cause for Trump’s claim. There is no proof that President Joe Biden, his White House assistants or the federal Justice Department had any part in launching or running Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution – and Bragg, a Democrat, is a locally selected officer who does not convey to the federal government. The charge in the case was approved by a great jury of ordinary citizens.
Trump has frequently invoked a lawyer on Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while creating such claims; Colangelo rejected the Justice Department in 2022 to join the community attorney’s office as senior advisor to Bragg. But there is no proof that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s professional decision. Colangelo and Bragg had been associates before Bragg was selected as Manhattan neighbourhood attorney in 2021.
Before Colangelo operated at the Justice Department, he and Bragg performed at the same time in the headquarters of New York’s state attorney general, where Colangelo examined Trump’s charity and Trump’s economic practices and was interested in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump management.
The very most significant burden under the Biden project would have been taken by the very wealthiest households; the Tax Policy Center found that households in the top 0.1% would have seen their after-tax earnings decline by more than 20%. That’s a lot, Gleckman noted, but it’s still nowhere near the quadrupling Trump reasons Biden is looking for. And again, even this enlargement would have been only for a small subset of the population.
Biden has pledged not to increase taxes by even a cent for anyone earning under $400,000 per year.