NEW YORK (SONNA) \u2014 A stone-faced Donald Trump\u00a0made a momentous courtroom appearance Tuesday when he was confronted with\u00a0a 34-count felony indictment\u00a0charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign.<\/p>\n
The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom was a stunning \u2014 and humbling \u2014 spectacle for the first ex-president to ever face criminal charges. With Trump watching in silence, prosecutors bluntly accused him of criminal conduct and set the stage for a possible criminal trial in the city where he became a celebrity decades ago.<\/p>\n
The indictment centers on allegations that Trump\u00a0falsified internal business records\u00a0at his private company while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy. It includes 34 counts of fudging records related to checks Trump sent to his personal lawyer and problem-solver to reimburse him for his role in paying off a porn actor who said she had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendant, Donald J. Trump, falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws,\u201d said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy.<\/p>\n
Trump, somber and silent as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom, said \u201cnot guilty\u201d in a firm voice while facing a judge who warned him to refrain from rhetoric that could inflame or cause civil unrest. All told, the ever-verbose Trump, who for weeks before Tuesday\u2019s arraignment had assailed the case against him as political persecution, uttered only 10 words in the courtroom. He appeared to glare for a period at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case.<\/p>\n
As he returned to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where he delivered a primetime address to hundreds of supporters, Trump again protested his innocence and asserted on his Truth Social platform that the \u201chearing was shocking to many in that they had no \u2018surprises,\u2019 and therefore, no case.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his speech, Trump lashed out anew at the prosecution and attacked in bitter terms the prosecutor and the judge presiding over the case despite being admonished hours earlier about incendiary rhetoric. In a sign of that other probes are weighing on him, Trump also steered his speech into a broadside against a separate Justice Department investigation into the\u00a0mishandling of classified documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought anything like this could happen in America,\u201d Trump said of the New York indictment. \u201cThis fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd at Mar-a-Lago included supporters like failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and longtime ally Roger Stone. Trump\u2019s wife, Melania, was absent from his side and was also not seen with him in New York.<\/p>\n
Even so, the indictment amounts to a remarkable reckoning for Trump after years of investigations into his personal, business and political dealings. It shows how even as Trump is looking to reclaim the White House in 2024, he is shadowed by investigations related to his behavior in the two prior elections,\u00a0with prosecutors in Atlanta\u00a0and\u00a0Washington\u00a0scrutinizing efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the 2020 presidential election \u2014 probes that could produce even more charges.<\/p>\n
In the New York case, each count of falsifying business records, a felony, is punishable by up to four years in prison \u2014 though it\u2019s not clear if a judge would impose any prison time if Trump is convicted. The next court date is Dec. 4 \u2014 two months before Republicans begin their nominating process in earnest \u2014 and Trump will again be expected to appear.<\/p>\n
A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.<\/p>\n
The arraignment also delved into Trump\u2019s rhetoric on the case, with prosecutors at one point handing printouts of his social media posts to the judge and defense lawyers as Trump looked on. Supreme Court Judge\u00a0Juan Merchan\u00a0did not impose a gag order but told Trump\u2019s lawyers to urge him to refrain from posts that could encourage unrest.<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (SONNA) \u2014 A stone-faced Donald Trump\u00a0made a momentous courtroom appearance Tuesday when he was confronted with\u00a0a 34-count felony indictment\u00a0charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign. The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom was a stunning \u2014 and humbling \u2014 spectacle for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":415856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-415855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415857,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415855\/revisions\/415857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}