NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 felony counts related to payments to silence an adult film actress during his 2016 presidential campaign in the city that made him famous, under extraordinary courtroom security. He is the first former or current president of the United States to face criminal charges.
The charges, for falsifying business records in the first degree, were announced at an arraignment hearing Tuesday afternoon and detailed in an indictment that was released shortly after. The indictment can be found here.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was investigating reimbursement payments Trump made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who paid $130,000 to actress Stephanie Clifford, professionally known as Stormy Daniels, during Trump’s candidacy in 2016 to prevent her from disclosing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Trump denies having a sexual encounter with Daniels years before the campaign.
According to Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Chris Connolly, Trump falsified business records in order to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election, disguised illegal payments and collaborated with others to suppress damaging information. He claimed that a Trump lawyer, presumably Cohen, paid Daniels to avoid negative attention and that Trump later reimbursed Cohen in monthly payments, concealing those payments and also concealing them in tax records. Under New York law, the intent to further another crime is a felony.
Connolly did not request a gag order during the arraignment, but he did ask New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to address recent public statements and “threatening communications” from Trump, including a social media post two weeks ago in which the former president threatened “death and destruction” if he was charged in the case.
Trump, who has been one of the world’s most powerful people for the past four years, left his penthouse at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan in a private motorcade accompanied by New York City police vehicles early Tuesday afternoon. After the procession arrived at the courthouse, Trump pumped his fist to supporters before entering the building to be arrested and fingerprinted.
Around 2:30 p.m., a television news camera captured an unsmiling Trump — dressed in his trademark blue suit and red necktie, but now as a criminal defendant — entering the 15th-floor courtroom for his arraignment.
Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, Joe Tacopina, and Boris Epshteyn were Trump’s attorneys at the defendant’s table.
When those present were asked to stand as Merchan entered, the former president adjusted his suit jacket. As the hearing came to a close, Trump stood up at the defense table and adjusted his blazer once more. He looked around the courtroom, briefly glaring at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was sitting in the front row. Trump then quickly drove away in his motorcade.
The prosecution of a former president puts the judicial system to the ultimate test in a bitterly partisan political environment: Trump, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and currently leads most polls, has already slammed Merchan and Bragg (D), calling the case a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
Trump, 76, who rose to prominence as a New York-based real estate and reality television mogul before launching his presidential campaign in 2016, has denied any wrongdoing. Trump’s aides say he will speak to the media Tuesday evening at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club in south Florida, where he has spent the majority of his post-presidency.
The former president’s Secret Service detail guided him on a carefully choreographed route from Trump Tower to the courtroom, while hundreds of uniformed New York City police officers lined the streets.
Protesters and supporters, as well as a phalanx of reporters and television news cameras, clogged the area. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held a rally for Trump supporters across the street from the courthouse. Many routine court appearances were canceled in order to reduce the number of people in the building before Trump’s appearance.
In addition to the New York case, Trump is the subject of three other criminal investigations, including Justice Department inquiries into his handling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021 and his possible involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurgency by Trump supporters at the United States Capitol and efforts to overturn the election results. Local prosecutors in Georgia are also looking into Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to persuade state officials to declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia over Joe Biden.
Despite Trump’s unprecedented legal troubles, being charged with — or found guilty of — a crime does not preclude him from running for office. The former president has attempted to capitalize on the flood of media attention surrounding the New York indictment in order to shore up political support among his party’s elected leadership and conservative base, as well as raise funds.
Hours before his arraignment, Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising email to supporters in which he warns that the United States is becoming a “Marxist Third World country that… IMPRISONS its political opposition” and requests additional donations because “I will be out of commission for the next few hours.” Trump wrote on Truth Social, a social media platform he co-founded, that the experience was “SURREAL,” adding, “WOW, they are going to ARREST Maine.” I can’t believe this is happening in the United States.”
Merchan has prohibited the use of cell phones and other communication devices in the courtroom.
Trump has attempted to portray Bragg, a Democrat who became Manhattan’s top prosecutor in January 2022, as a partisan who is out to get him. He has accused Merchan of personal animus, a charge that one of Trump’s own lawyers denied on Sunday. Merchan oversaw another trial in which the Trump Organization was convicted and fined $1.6 million for running a tax-fraud scheme.
The prosecutor, the ex-president, and the resurrected ‘zombie’ case
Bragg and his team spent months investigating whether Trump falsified business records related to the Daniels payments in a way that could constitute a campaign finance violation — a set of facts and allegations that some lawyers dubbed a “zombie” case because it has lingered for years, seemingly lifeless but not actually dead.
According to legal experts, the case’s apparent prosecution theory is an untested application of state law, but it isn’t necessarily fatal to the case. Trump’s legal team is expected to try to have the case dismissed before it goes to trial, arguing that there was no crime committed because even Trump’s alleged behavior does not fit the meaning or application of the law.
The former president flew from Florida to New York on his TRUMP-emblazoned private jet on Monday, spent the night in his Trump Tower penthouse, and surrendered to authorities on Tuesday.
Jacobs, Alemany, and Wells contributed reporting from New York.
This is an ongoing story. It will be revised.