Former U.S. President Donald Trump on March 25, 2023 shrugged off his possible indictment as he used his first presidential campaign rally for the 2024 election to take aim at his political opponents.
“The district attorney of New York under the auspices and direction of the ‘department of injustice’ in Washington DC was investigating me for something that is not a crime, not a misdemeanor, not an affair,” he told supporters in Waco, Texas.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating a $130,000 payment from Mr. Trump’s office to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
“I never liked ‘Horse Face’,” Mr. Trump said, using his derogatory name for Daniels.
“That wouldn’t be the one. There is no one. We have a great First Lady.”
Mr. Trump had said he would be arrested last week, warning that his indictment could result in “potential death & destruction,” apparently from angry supporters.
He would become the first former or sitting President to ever be charged with a crime if the grand jury, a panel of citizens convened by Bragg, decides to indict.
Followers flock rally at Waco
Die-hard followers of Donald Trump flocked to the ex-president’s election rally in Waco, Texas, on Saturday, brimming with defiance as their favored candidate faced overlapping threats of criminal indictment.
Several thousand Trump supporters lined up outside the Waco Regional Airport waiting to go through security and enter the event, with the first speaker scheduled for 2 p.m. CDT (1900 GMT). The crowd, many wearing Trump T-shirts and hats, broke into applause when Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress, walked into the venue.
Fifty-seven-year-old Laurie Hansen said Mr. Trump was “the best President ever.”
“He’s the only one who can bring our country back,” she said. “We are at a precipice. It’s time to put our foot down and say, ‘No more.’”
Like others at the rally, Hansen dismissed talk that Trump might be prosecuted over allegations he violated campaign finance laws for paying hush money to an adult film actress, or hoarded top-secret documents, or masterminded a plot seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
“They’re all political witch hunts,” said Hansen, a sales coordinator who drove three hours from Sherman, Texas. “We all know that.”
