After former President Donald Trump claimed that "thousands" of his supporters were "turned away from the courthouse" where his hush money trial is being held, New York attorney Michael Popok, who was deployed to the scene by Meidas Touch, easily debunked the dubious claim.
Earlier, Trump claimed that his supporters were forced to leave the area "by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave." He called it "an armed camp to keep people away."
Trump proceeded to attack "Maggot Hagerman," referring to Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who relayed that he was disappointed with the turnout he observed, before further professing his victimhood:
"Maggot Hagerman of The Failing New York Times, falsely reported that I was disappointed with the crowds. No, I’m disappointed with Maggot, and her lack of writing skill, and that some of these many police aren’t being sent to Columbia and NYU to keep the schools open and the students safe."
"The Legal Scholars call the case a Scam that should never have been brought. I call it Election Interference and a personal hit job by a conflicted and corrupt Judge who shouldn’t be allowed to preside over this Political Hoax."
"New York Justice is being reduced to ashes, and the World is breathlessly watching. Hopefully, Appellate Courts can save it, and all of the companies that are fleeing to other jurisdictions. They can no longer take a chance on New York Justice!"
You can see Trump's post below.
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On Tuesday morning, observers at the trial noted that the main street along the courthouse remained open to traffic, and there were only a few Trump supporters present.
Popok was among them and he quickly shut down Trump's latest lie with a Meidas Touch video showing the actual situation outside the courthouse, which you can see below.
He said:
"I want to dispel all the rumors really generated by Donald Trump that his supporters are somehow being blocked and banned from coming down here. The reason why there are no supporters... is because they don't want to come out and support him."
"There is no barrier, there is no barricade. True, you can't just walk down Centre Street, that's been blocked off, but the parallel street to Centre Street, Lafayette, is fully open. It leads you right to the courthouse."
Popok decided to "test this theory that Trump has that all of his supporters will be here" if it wasn't for the "blockades" he's claimed are impeding them.
Popok showed viewers that the park outside the courthouse is "entirely open," and the feed shows plenty of people enjoying freedom of movement. Then he zoomed in on the people gathered outside the courthouse "that are interested in this trial," his feed showing that barely a dozen people, "both red and blue," were standing behind a barricade.
Afterward, he turned his camera back to the courthouse, concluding:
"Right? We are directly across from the courthouse [and] as you can see, [there's] a completely empty park."
The reveal exposed Trump to even more criticism.
Despite the high security measures in place for the trial of a former U.S. president, people are still permitted to gather in a park across from the courthouse.
The courthouse remains accessible to the public, and a large sidewalk in front of it is open to pedestrians. Those who have attended Trump’s court dates so far report that crowds of supporters typically number fewer than a dozen.
Trump's preoccupation with crowd size has garnered him significant ridicule, perhaps most infamously after he quibbled over the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration in 2017.
Trump, often through embattled former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, openly disputed reports about the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration ever since the National Park Service (NPS) retweeted a post comparing the crowd size at Trump's inauguration to the larger crowd at former President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.
A report released in June of that year by the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior concluded that NPS officials did not alter records of crowd sizes at the inauguration ceremony and that all witnesses that were interviewed denied that staff had been instructed "to alter records for the inauguration or to remove crowd size information."
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