At the Michigan rally, Trump lashes out at the judge who fined him $355 million

Former President Donald J. Trump aired his latest legal defeat over the freezing of supporters at a rally in Michigan on Saturday evening, a day after a New York judge fined him nearly $355 million plus interest in his civil fraud case.

The Republican front-runner for his party's presidential nomination, Mr. Trump, denied conspiring to manipulate his assets, for which he was found liable by Judge Arthur F. Engoron in a ruling that could wipe out Mr. Trump's entire money supply fade away. .

“This judge is a lunatic,” he said in his opening salvo at his meeting, held at an airport hangar in Oakland County, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Detroit.

Trump used a similar line of attack against Letitia James, New York's attorney general, who accused him of exaggerating his wealth in the lengthy case. Barred by a judge from holding top positions at any New York company for three years, including parts of his own Trump Organization, Mr. Trump criticized the justice system and said he was being persecuted.

Trump's visit to Michigan coincided with the first day of early, in-person voting in the state, which uses both a primary and a caucus-style convention to award delegates in Republican Party contests for the first time.

During the rally, the Trump campaign posted large signs urging supporters to take advantage of early voting.

“So you can do that, or you can wait a little longer,” Mr. Trump mused to his supporters, many of whom waited in line for hours in chills in the high single digits to low teens to attend.

In his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, Michigan played a major role for Mr. Trump, who lost the state to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.

Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan and a foil for Mr. Trump, branded the former president as a divisive extremist on Saturday ahead of his visit there.

In a statement released through the Biden campaign, she said: “Michigan did not buy what Donald Trump sold in 2020, and neither will we in 2024.”

Trump's acceptance of early voting was in stark contrast to his disdain for it in his previous campaigns, when he baselessly claimed it was a recipe for voter fraud.

“If we win Michigan, we're going to win the election,” Trump said at his rally. He later continued to spread falsehoods about voter fraud in the state. “We have to keep an eye on Detroit. They had more ballots than voters.”

The Republican Party has been consumed in chaos, and this week two rival factions moved forward with plans to hold dueling conventions on March 2, one in Western Michigan and the other in Detroit.

Both groups have expressed fierce loyalty to Mr. Trump, who, like the Republican National Committee, has made clear who he wants to lead the party in the key state: Pete Hoekstra, his former ambassador to the Netherlands and a former member of the House of Representatives.

“I said, 'Can you get Hoekstra?'” Mr. Trump said of his support for the role.

But the Trump-style election denier who has led Michigan's Republican Party for nearly a year, Kristina Karamo, is clinging to power. She claims that a Jan. 6 vote by a group of state party leaders to oust her was illegal and conflicted with the RNC's recognition of Mr. Hoekstra on Wednesday as her rightfully chosen replacement.

The infighting has generated unwanted headlines and headaches for Republicans in Michigan, where Trump averaged a lead of about 60 percentage points over his last remaining rival in the nomination race, Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump's relatively smooth march toward the nomination has belied the wave of legal setbacks surrounding him, both in the four criminal cases and other civil cases against him.

Perhaps the biggest yet came on Friday, with the civil fraud fine, which could exceed $450 million with interest. It also undermined Trump's ruthlessly constructed image of his business empire and personal fortune, his calling card that helped propel him to reality TV stardom and then to the presidency in 2016.

That verdict, along with a recent $83.3 million jury verdict in a defamation lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Mr. Trump of a decades-old rape, would wipe out the entire stash of cash of the former president. (A jury previously found him liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll.)