‘Not True’: CNN’s Elie Honig Calls BS On Trump Courtroom Rant At Hush Money Sentencing

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig called BS on President-elect Donald Trump’s courtroom rant about District Attorney Alvin Bragg during Judge Juan Merchan’s sentencing hearing.

Trump appeared virtually on Friday for sentencing on the 34 felony counts he was found guilty of in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial, hours after the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to deny Trump’s emergency petition.

The judge imposed a sentence of an unconditional discharge, which carries no penalty but finalizes Trump’s status as a convicted felon and avails him of full appeal rights.

During the hearing, Trump went off on a rant about the case, but on Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Honig fact-checked Trump minutes before the sentence was passed:

LAURA COATES: Ellie, the idea of a now defendant, somebody who had had a guilty verdict issued, this is not novel. We often expect to hear from the defendant. But this moment is historic.

ELIE HONIG: Yeah. So I’m eager to see what. Here we go.

Donald Trump begins by saying this has been a very terrible experience and a setback for the New York court system. As you say, Laura, in any sentencing, the defendant has the option to address the court. Sometimes defendants choose not to do that, especially if they’re intending to appeal. But clearly, Donald Trump is speaking now.

He is going to be it sounds like so far he’s being characteristically aggressive. He says this has been a terrible experience, a setback for the New York court system. And as you said, this is sort of the fundamental disagreement here.

The D.A. and the judge will agree with the D.A., has said this was a righteous case. No man is above the law. But Todd Blanche’s argument that he made that it sounds like Trump is is echoing.

And here Trump says this is the case that Alvin Bragg did not want to bring, is that this case should never have been brought, that it was politically motivated.

What Trump’s referring to there. This is a case that Alvin Bragg did not want to bring. That’s not true.

Alvin Bragg declined to bring a separate case, but Alvin Bragg chose to bring this case. And I see Trump now says of the D.A., quote, “He thought it was from what I read and from what I heard, inappropriately handled before he got there.”.

Trump is sort of mishmash, mashing several different stories in his head because there was a separate investigation of a separate crime that Alvin Bragg, when he took office in 2022, declined to charge.

But that had to do with Donald Trump’s finances. This hush money case is a case–. Look, I disagree with the decision, but Alvin Bragg made the decision to bring this case. And obviously he and his office, the Manhattan DA’s office, stands behind it.

I see. Trump said, quote, “He said, I was falsifying business records, falsification of business records.”.

That is the underlying charge here. The hush money payments are at the core of this case. The falsification is the actual crime.

Watch above via CNN News Central.