Trump, blending legal battles and campaign, tops long day in court with rambling New Hampshire rally

Follow live: Updates from AP’s coverage of the presidential election. So he was extra appreciative on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump journeyed to New Hampshire after spending the day in a New York courtroom, where he sat defiantly during his trial to determine damages for defaming a magazine writer after she accused him of sexual assault. That includes four prosecutions — including two by Steele’s former employer — plus the defamation lawsuit, which comes on the heels of a $5 million verdict for E. Jean Carroll in her initial sexual assault lawsuit against Trump, plus a fraud case filed by the New York Attorney General’s office. But Steele dismissed them as “all campaign interference by the Democrats because they can’t beat him any other way.” “Every time he goes into a courtroom,” Steele, 75, who retired in 2016, said approvingly of Trump, “he always comes out with more support.” Steele and a few hundred other supporters spent hours waiting for Trump, who delayed his New Hampshire appearance to hold a late-afternoon news conference after court concluded in which he slammed the judge in the case as “a radical Trump-hater.” The former president spoke more than two hours later than scheduled in a location that was much smaller than his normal venue — a hotel ballroom that could only accommodate some 300 people. “Would you trust Joe Biden to run your store while you go off to New Hampshire to find a small hill to go skiing?” Trump asked at one point, riffing on his likely Democratic rival in November like a standup comic.