Donald Trump slams criminal charges as 'insult to our country'

Donald Trump has offered a full-throated defence of his conduct in his first public remarks since being charged over hush money payments, blasting the criminal prosecution as "an insult to our country."

Hours earlier the 76-year-old former US president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts in a dramatic hearing in New York that transfixed the nation — and began the countdown to the first ever criminal trial of an American president.

"I never thought anything like this could happen in America — never thought it could happen," Trump told an audience of several hundred donors, political allies and other supporters after returning to Mar-a-Lago, his beachfront mansion in southern Florida.

"The only crime that I've committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it ... It's an insult to our country."

Trump — the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination — said from a stage festooned with American flags in an opulent gold-and-cream ballroom that "radical left" prosecutors across the country were out to get him "at any cost."

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is prosecuting Trump for cooking his company's books to hide payments he arranged to adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 election, to cover up an alleged affair a decade earlier.

Trump's former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg is serving a five-month jail term for the same charge of falsifying business records.

Manhattan prosecutors say Trump "repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election."

A "statement of facts" released alongside the indictment included details of hush money payments to Daniels, Playboy model Karen McDougal and a former Trump Tower doorman claiming to have a story about a child Trump had out of wedlock.

READ MORE: Trump pleads not guilty to felony charges in historic US criminal case

'Darkest hours'

Daniels was paid $130,000 by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, while McDougal and the doorman got $150,000 and $30,000 respectively from AMI, the publishers of supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer.

Bragg alleges that Trump and his allies "also took steps that mischaracterised, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments."

Trump and his lawyers have accused Bragg of over-reaching in his characterisation of the allegations.

The one-time reality TV star had sent a fundraising email shortly before flying back to Florida, saying that since the news of his indictment broke, his campaign had raised over $10 million.

"While we are living through the darkest hours of American history, I can say that at least for this moment right now, I am in great spirits," Trump said.

Trump accused Bragg of being out to get him "before he knew anything about me." He called Juan Merchan "a Trump-hating judge" and prosecutor Jack Smith a "lunatic special counsel". 

The various legal predicaments are entangling Trump has he makes another run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

"Now, there's massive election interference at a scale never seen," he said.

The twice-impeached Republican is the first sitting or former American president to be criminally indicted.

Earlier in the Manhattan courtroom, he answered "not guilty" to all charges in a clear voice, sitting with hunched shoulders and at times looking annoyed but mostly listening cooperatively.

Judge Juan Merchan said a trial could potentially start as soon as January — a month before the presidential primaries kick off — although Trump's lawyers have indicated they would want it pushed back to next spring.

READ MORE: US braces for Donald Trump's historic court appearance, arraignment