Former U.S. president Donald Trump arrives at Reagan National Airport after his arraignment in federal court in Washington on Aug. 3.DOUG MILLS/The New York Times
Donald Trump has been formally charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging attack on U.S. democracy that culminated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, in a bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The former U.S. president pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in a Washington courthouse late Thursday afternoon after his third criminal indictment in four months. A crowd of several hundred journalists, protesters and onlookers gathered behind a police perimeter around the building on Pennsylvania Avenue mere blocks from the Capitol.
The proceedings kick off an unprecedented prosecution of a former president accused of attempting to overthrow his country’s constitutional system to illegally cling to power. They will unfold amid the 2024 election campaign, in which Mr. Trump is seeking to return to office.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers signalled at the hearing that they would seek to delay the case. The newest member of his legal team, John Lauro, pushed back against special counsel Jack Smith’s promise of a “speedy” trial, contending that the expected evidence in the case will be too complicated for that. Mr. Lauro opted for the latest possible date for the next hearing, Aug. 28.
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If he returns to the White House, Mr. Trump is expected to either pardon himself or try to interfere with the Justice Department to have the case dropped, making the timeline for the trial – and whether it can be concluded before voting day – a crucial question.
Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, who presided over the 30-minute hearing, did not confiscate Mr. Trump’s passport or impose any restrictions on his liberty. She did, however, warn him that he could be arrested if he tried to communicate with witnesses in the case without lawyers present. Mr. Trump stood to enter his plea and thanked Ms. Upadhyaya at the end.
In a brief statement to reporters at Reagan Airport before he left Washington for his estate at Bedminster, N.J., the former president complained about “filth and decay” in the U.S. capital before claiming that he was being prosecuted for political reasons. “It’s a very sad thing to see it when you look at what’s happening. This is a persecution of a political opponent,” he said.
Mr. Trump faces four federal charges in the case: one for conspiring to defraud the United States, one for conspiring against the right to vote, and two for obstructing Congress from certifying the election.
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He is accused of conspiring with six associates, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, to have state legislatures, Congress, the Department of Justice and then-vice-president Mike Pence throw out Joe Biden’s election victory. When this failed, Mr. Trump called his supporters to Washington and had them descend on Congress when it was meeting to certify the election results.
The former president was previously indicted by Mr. Smith in a separate case in which he is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. He is also charged at the state level in New York in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star. A grand jury in Georgia, meanwhile, is mulling whether to charge him in a fourth case over his effort to reverse the election result in that state.
The stakes for the U.S. are high: No previous president has ever been criminally indicted and prosecutions against high-level politicians for fomenting insurrection are few and far between.
“It’s the most important trial in the history of the United States,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert at Harvard University. “It is the trial that will determine whether we remain a democracy, or at least a republic.”
A supporter carries a large flag in support of Donald Trump beside television satellite trucks outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Court House ahead of Trump's arrival on Aug. 3, in Washington.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The speed of the proceedings will largely be up to the judge who will oversee the case, Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former president Barack Obama who has served on the bench since 2014. She previously ruled against Mr. Trump when he tried to block a congressional committee investigating his efforts to overturn the election from accessing his White House files.
So far, Mr. Trump has not paid any political price for the indictments. Polling shows him more than 30 percentage points ahead in the race for the Republican nomination and competitive with Mr. Biden in a prospective general election rematch.
A majority of Republican voters continue to believe Mr. Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him – a claim that Mr. Smith’s indictment charges Mr. Trump has always known to be false.
“We know the election was stolen. What Trump wants to do is help us fight for our freedom,” said Daniel Demoura, 32, as he waved a campaign flag for the former president outside court.
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The gathering outside was lively but mostly peaceful, with only a few brief shouting matches between Mr. Trump’s supporters and detractors. One man played anti-Trump punk songs. Another wore an inflatable costume that portrayed the former president as an overgrown infant.
Some lamented the length of time between Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, many of which played out publicly, and the indictment.
“It’s humiliating that this has taken two and a half years to get here,” said Shauna Leibold, 29, who drove in from Pennsylvania to protest Mr. Trump. “It’s essential for this country to survive.”
Mr. Smith, who sat in on the arraignment Thursday, was installed late last year by Attorney-General Merrick Garland to put the proceedings at arm’s length from Mr. Biden’s appointees at the Justice Department.
Unlike Mr. Garland, who drew criticism for the seemingly glacial pace of his investigation, Mr. Smith appears to have moved swiftly. A former federal prosecutor who handled high-profile political corruption cases, he most recently worked for the Kosovo war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Adrian Morrow