Former president Donald Trump has claimed he is the victim of election interference, hours after being charged in court, and lashed out at New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg for bringing criminal charges against him.

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump told supporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night.

“The only crime that I’ve committed has been to fearlessly defend our nation against those who seek to destroy it.”

Trump returned to Florida after appearing in a Manhattan court, where he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, as prosecutors accused him of orchestrating payments to two women before the 2016 US election to suppress publication of their sexual encounters with him.

Trump accused Bragg of being out to get him “before he knew anything about me”.

He said the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, is “a Trump-hating judge”.

In a subdued tone, Trump reviewed all the various legal cases against him, from the handling of classified documents that were taken to Mar-a-Lago when Trump moved out of the White House in early 2021, and the election interference case he is facing in Georgia from the 2020 election.

The documents case was being pursued by a “lunatic special counsel”, Trump said, referring to prosecutor Jack Smith.

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.