Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) emerged from court proceedings Monday in former President Trump’s hush money criminal trial and called the Manhattan courtroom “the most depressing thing I’ve ever been in.”
“First of all, I’m disappointed in the courtroom. I’m hearing, ‘Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump.’ He is ‘former President Trump,’” Tuberville said to the media outside the courtroom.
“Give him some respect. I mean, that’s what that place is in there. It is no respect. Here is what I’m seeing, too. It is depressing. That courtroom is depressing. This is New York City. The icon of our country. And we got a courtroom that is the most depressing thing I’ve ever been in.”
Tuberville took aim at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who he said enters the courtroom and “acts like it is his Super Bowl.”
Tuberville, who attended the trial with Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), also said he was there as Trump’s friend, more so than as a political supporter.
“The Republican candidate for president of the United States is going through mental anguish in a courtroom that’s very depressing, very depressing. I’m glad to stand by President Trump. I’m a friend of his. I’m here more as a friend than backing him as candidate as president,” he said.
The remarks came amid highly anticipated testimony from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, who has been billed as the prosecution’s star witness in the hush money case. Trump is charged with falsifying 34 business records over a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen sent to a porn actor to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with the then-2016 candidate.
Cohen and Trump have since turned on each other, making Cohen’s testimony — the second time he’s taken the stand in a Trump case — particularly volatile.
Trump is under a gag order that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and the judge’s family. But his allies in Congress are under no such restrictions.
Tuberville, in his Monday remarks to the press, went after Cohen, whom he referred to as a “convicted felon,” and blamed Democrats for the charges brought against Trump.
“This guy worked for President Trump. How can you be convinced by somebody that is a serial liar? I mean, it should be no reason that anybody should listen to this guy. But at the end of the day the Democrats — the Democrats are trying to beat President Trump in the jury box because they can’t beat him at the ballot box,” he said.
Vance, speaking before Tuberville, also went after the judge, the district attorney and the judge’s daughter, a political consultant who he said “is making millions of dollars running against Donald Trump, raising money for Donald Trump’s political opponents.”
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, dismissed Trump’s request to recuse himself from the case over the alleged conflict.
“There is no agenda here,” Merchan said last month. “We want justice to be done.”