President-elect Donald Trump lashed out after his sentencing in the Manhattan “hush money” case calling it a “great embarrassment” to the state of New York.

“This has been a very terrible experience,” the president-elect, who appeared via video, said in New York City courtroom on Friday. “I think it’s been a tremendous setback for New York and the New York court system.”

“This is a case that Alvin Bragg did not want to bring. He thought it was, from what I read and from what I hear, inappropriately handled before he got there. And a gentleman from a law firm came in and acted as a district attorney,” he said. “And that gentleman, from what I heard, was a criminal or almost criminal in what he did. It was very inappropriate. It was somebody involved with my political opponent.” 

“I think it’s an embarrassment to New York and New York has a lot of problems, but this is a great embarrassment,” Trump said.

“It’s been a political witch hunt,” he said. “It was done to damage my reputation so that I’d lose the election. And obviously, that didn’t work. And the people of our country got to see this firsthand because they watched the case in your courtroom. They got to see this firsthand. And then they voted, and I won.”

In the same audio, shared with the media by the court, Assistant District Attorney Josh Steinglass said that the government had “overwhelming evidence to support the jury’s verdict” and that Trump “has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm’s way” with what he said about the trial.

“I very, very much disagree with much of what the government just said about this case, about the legitimacy of what happened in this courtroom during the trial and about President Trump’s conduct fighting this case from before it was indicted, while it was indicted, to the jury’s verdict, and even to this day,” Todd Blanche, an attorney for the president-elect, said.