So, you’ve been indicted for hoarding international military secrets in cardboard boxes at your personal residence and obstructing the subsequent grand jury investigation. Now what?
The sprawling case against Donald Trump will now wrench the national gaze toward South Florida, where Trump will appear before a judge on Tuesday to enter a formal “not guilty” plea to the 37 felony charges he faces. That initial appearance, known as an arraignment, will likely take place before U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee who has ruled favorably for him in the past — or a federal magistrate judge named Edwin Torres.
After the arraignment, prosecutors and Trump’s legal team will undertake a familiar, and almost routine, set of procedural steps to advance the case.
First, they’ll discuss a timeline for further action in the case. That includes beginning discussions about a “protective order” to govern the sharing of evidence among the parties. That process, known as discovery, is particularly fraught in a case involving an extraordinary amount of highly classified intelligence — the protection of which is the basis for the investigation in the first place.
The “discovery” process, however, is what will likely be the most time-consuming phase of the trial. Trump is facing 31 charges for “willfully retaining” classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate, with each charge linked to a specific document that has only been described in broad strokes in the indictment. Trump’s pursuit of details about those records and how much of them are allowed to be provided to the parties in the case — and ultimately to the jury and public — will be a crucial trial issue that could take months to resolve.
The parties will also likely discuss setting initial deadlines for motions or updates in the case — including a potential timeline to bring the matter to trial. Special counsel Jack Smith indicated on Thursday that he intends to seek a “speedy trial” in accordance with that constitutional guarantee — but what that means in the real world is unclear.
Trump is already slated to go on trial next March on charges emanating from a New York state investigation about his alleged payment of hush money to a porn star. It would be an unusually ambitious timeframe if Smith seeks to bring his case to fruition ahead of the Manhattan trial.
There’s no expectation that prosecutors will seek onerous restrictions on Trump while he awaits the federal trial, though there will likely be a discussion of his pretrial release conditions — which could include restrictions on his ability to travel outside of his home district or other forms of monitoring and check-ins with the government. In a case carrying significant potential prison time, those restrictions are meant to ensure compliance with court appearances to reduce the likelihood of violations.
For Trump, squeezing court dates into an already jammed schedule — which includes travel for his 2024 presidential campaign as well as a startling array of other legal obligations — is a monumental task that requires Secret Service coordination and security preparation anywhere he goes.
And if that all sounds simple enough, there’s more in the offing. Trump still faces two other ongoing criminal probes related to his efforts to subvert the 2020 election. It’s possible that, by the end of this year, his indictment count will double from two to four.
Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.
“I’ll never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. “Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable.”
Trump is not legally prohibited from running for president from prison or as a convicted felon. But such a bid would nevertheless provide a massive stress test for the country’s political and legal systems.
The former president leveled harsh criticisms at special counsel Jack Smith and argued that the case against him was politically motivated and flimsy. “These are thugs and degenerates who are after me,” he said.
Trump predicted he would not be convicted and said he did not anticipate taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so “where they pay me some damages.”
He sidestepped the possibility that he would pardon himself should he win the presidency in 2024. “I don’t think I'll ever have to,” Trump said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
While Trump said campaign fundraising had skyrocketed since the indictment was issued, he conceded it was an unwelcome development.
“Nobody wants to be indicted,” said Trump. “I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months. It’s been political.”
COLUMBUS, GA — Donald Trump may be facing decades in prison for hoarding military secrets at his home, but he appeared Saturday to be a man unburdened by the legal fight that led to a 37-count federal felony indictment earlier this week.
In his first public remarks since a magistrate judge unsealed the damning case against him, Trump made clear that his best — and perhaps primary — defense against the charges will be waged in arenas before friendly audiences rather than in the courtroom.
The former president sought to galvanize his supporters to view the entire American justice system as corrupt, weaponized to target conservatives and deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election. The indictment, he said, was a “joke,” done only because Democrats feared him.
“These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them,” Trump said to an audience assembled by the Georgia Republican Party. “These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”
But while that strategy has helped Trump turn the scandals he’s faced over the years into political strengths, the new and extremely detailed case will test the bounds of that strategy in ways Trump has never faced before.
Smith’s indictment suggests Trump personally directed aides to stash highly classified documents in cardboard storage boxes that he ordered shipped to Mar-a-Lago as his presidency expired. When the National Archives and Justice Department attempted to retrieve them, the Justice Department says, Trump ordered a valet to relocate dozens of boxes so they wouldn’t be found.
The indictment includes 31 charges for “willful retention” of classified documents, many of them described as military secrets of foreign governments, including allies. Six of the charges against Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were also for obstructing the grand jury investigation.
Trump made no secret of his plan to portray the prosecution against him — brought by special counsel Jack Smith — as secretly engineered by President Joe Biden, though the White House and the Department of Justice have gone to great lengths to keep a wall between them on the matter.
“This is a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out,” he proclaimed.
Trump used his remarks to demean both Smith — whom he called “deranged” — and the case Smith put together against him, which relied on extraordinary evidence culled from employees at Mar-a-Lago, close advisers to Trump and even one of his attorneys — Evan Corcoran — who was ordered by a judge to testify to the grand jury investigating the matter.
Smith on Friday delivered his first public statement since taking over the investigation in November, saying “laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced.
“Violations of those laws put our country at risk,” he said.
Trump previewed some of his legal defenses as well, citing Bill Clinton’s decision to keep tapes from a journalists’ interview in his home rather than turn them over to the National Archives. Trump claimed that the Presidential Records Act permitted him to remove any records created during his administration, even if they were classified, and convert them to his personal property and remove them at will.
Trump’s combative posture was evident even in his travel companion en route to the Georgia speech.
Trump traveled to the gathering from his club in Bedminster, New Jersey early Saturday with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has been one of his fiercest defenders.
En route to the event, supporters lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the motorcade and some held “Witch Hunt” signs to greet him when he deplaned. In the room, he was treated like a conquering hero. The crowd was filled with red hats and Trump supporters, people holding their phones aloft to catch a picture. The audience erupted when he was introduced.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on the GOP to “coalesce” and elect “principled” leaders ahead of Donald Trump’s trip to the state Saturday, the former president’s first public appearance since his second criminal indictment.
Raffensperger gained national prominence after his Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Trump during which the former president asked him to “find” enough votes to secure his victory in the state’s 2020 presidential election vote count.
“The party really has to coalesce and we need to be focused on broad-based coalitions,” Raffensperger said on Fox News, noting his and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s overwhelming victories in the last election. “That’s how you win and that’s how Republicans win not only in Georgia, but nationwide — particularly as things are more competitive.”
Without concretely expressing support for the government’s criminal case against Trump, Raffensperger said “I support the rule of law,” and called on Republicans to “find leaders that are principled when they hold themselves up.”
While Raffensperger stressed he is “looking for someone that’s a principled leader with integrity,” when pressed he evaded saying definitively whether he would vote for Trump if he were to be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Raffensperger responded only by repeating that he’s “looking for principled leadership.”
Raffensperger testified before the Jan. 6 committee last June. The secretary and other state election officials appeared before a grand jury last year as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into whether Trump and others illegally tried to meddle in the 2020 election in the state.
Raffensperger confirmed that he was not invited to Trump’s speech at the Georgia state Republican convention Saturday afternoon.
“For some reason the constitutional officers — statewide elected Republican office-holders — were not invited to the event,” he quipped.
