Washington, Aug 19 (IANS): Former US President Donald Trump in a surprise move cancelled a scheduled news conference and said his lawyers would submit "irrefutable claims to deny the indictments" he had been handed over by federal and state juries of criminal conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election results that elected Joe Biden as President.
Trump, a frontrunner in the GOP race for the 2024 presidential elections in a field of some five prominent candidates, said he had reasons for cancelling the press conference as his lawyers would instead put "irrefutable and overwhelming evidence" in their legal filings over his latest indictment. Both the federal jury in Washington D.C. and state jury in Fulton County in Georgia had indicted him on four and 41 counts of felony to conspire with 18 associates to overturn a duly elected result of a President in 2020.
"I will no longer hold a news conference nor release a supposed extensive report that I previously said would clear me and allies of wrongdoing in the wake of the latest indictment by a Georgia grand jury," he said on Thursday.
"Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable and Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment by a publicity & campaign finance seeking D.A., who sadly presides over a record breaking Murder & Violent Crime area, Atlanta," Trump was reported by multiple media outlets in the US as saying.
"Therefore, the News Conference is no longer necessary!" Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump on Tuesday had announced his plans to hold the news conference, the morning after a Fulton County grand jury levied a racketeering charge over efforts to unravel the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
"A detailed but irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey," Trump said in the post announcing the news conference.
The reversal by Trump to call off the news conference followed advice from his lawyers as they were "increasingly concerned" about the information the former President shares with the public as his legal woes keep multiplying by the day, the New York Times reported.
Trump, the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, is facing four indictments, including two federal indictments for his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election in the days leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, and for classified documents he is accused of removing from the White House and failing to return. He is also facing charges in New York related to hush money payments made to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Additionally, he faces a $250 million penalty suit from New York DA Letitia James in a criminal case involving inflating his realty values to secure billions of dollars of loans fraudulently from Deutsche bank besides orchestrating a tax fraud availing of concessions he was not entitled to. He also faces a libel case from one Carroll for defaming her on TV and social media for which she has sued him for $10 million.
Trump is also facing a charge of manipulating investors into a Ponzi scheme in which they had lost several millions, media reports said.