Former US Secretary of State opened her speech at the New York State Democratic by taking a dig at former President Donald Trump, moments after a New York judge ruled that Mr Trump and two of his children must testify in the state attorney general’s investigation into his business practices.

       “It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get,” Ms Clinton said on Thursday at the Sheraton Times Square hotel in New York City. “So now his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue the noise machine gets turned up doesn’t it?”

       Moments before Ms Clinton took the stage, New York State Supreme Court judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Mr Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr and his daughter Ivanka Trump must testify in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ probe. The investigation centres around whether the Trump Organization manipulated the value of various assets on documents such as business loan applications.

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       Ms Clinton also hit out at the deep polarisation gripping the US, which began before Mr Trump assumed office but calcified during his administration. Ms Clinton called the US “deeply and dangerously divided”, adding, “It is one thing to have political disagreements, those are natural and healthy. But it is an entirely different thing altogether to lose a shared sense of truth, facts and reality itself.”

       She acknowledged that Mr Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, despite his best efforts to subvert the legitimate results of the vote, had not set the country on a course of healing but rather exposed ideological fault lines.

       “Now it should be clear to all of us that the struggle for unity and democracy is far from over,” she said.

       “When the Republican Party officially embraces violent insurrection as legitimate political discourse, when storming the Capitol, assaulting police officers and trying to overturn the election are being normalised, we are in uncharted territory,” she added.