Donald Trump Pleads Not Guilty To 34 Felonies After Being Arrested In NYC
This story is being continuously updated below.
Many were expecting at least one felony and several misdemeanors in disgraced former president Donald J. Trump’s indictment over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels that were campaign finance violations, but THIRTY FOUR felony counts? This is as bad as it could’ve possibly been, if the report below is true. Via Yahoo:
Donald Trump will be placed under arrest on Tuesday and informed that he has been charged with 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, according to a source who has been briefed on the procedures for the arraignment of the former president.
A New York City Police arrest report summarizing the charges against Trump will then be prepared and entered into the court system before he is led into a courtroom to be formally arraigned on the charges, none of which are misdemeanors.
The charge of falsification of business records is normally prosecuted in New York state as a misdemeanor. But Bragg’s office bumped up all the charges to Class E felonies — the lowest level of felonies in the New York State penal code on the grounds that the conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime, according to the source.
Under the New York State penal code, a conviction for the Class E felony of falsifying business records can result in a prison term of up to four years.
[Yahoo]
Details at the link, including the disappointing news that Trump won’t be taking a mug shot. The argument against taking the photo is that he’s among the most famous people in the world, so a mug shot isn’t necessary. If Trump is convicted on 34 felony charges, he’s obviously facing several years in prison. We’ll know more when the full indictment is unsealed in the coming hours.
UPDATE:
Trump arrived at the courthouse in lower Manhattan moments ago, and he’s now under arrest and in custody of the D.A.’s office. Here he was entering the courthouse:
The arraignment is scheduled to begin in just a few moments, at which time the indictment (reportedly containing 34 felony counts) will finally be unsealed.
Here was video taken just now of Trump, who is still in custody, heading into the courtroom for his arraignment, where he’ll presumably enter a plea of not guilty:
At this point, he’s now seen the charges he’s facing, and he clearly does not look good.
The arraignment is underway now.
Trump has pleaded not guilty on all 34 counts and is still in the courtroom, and while the indictment has been unsealed, the charges are unknown as the indictment still hasn’t been published online. He’s now been in there for nearly an hour, much longer than anyone anticipated, and some are speculating that the judge is admonishing Trump for his behavior leading up to today (as you’ll recall, Trump posted a photo of himself holding a baseball bat over the district attorney’s head), and perhaps even issuing a gag order on him.
Trump has finally left the courtroom and he was in fact admonished by the judge to refrain from making statements that might incite violence.
The indictment has now been released, and it charges Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal another crime. Each individual count is for each of the checks Trump had issued as hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal—both of whom had sexual affairs with Trump—as well as a NYC doorman who knew of Trump’s affairs ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign. Here’s the full indictment, which is being called a “bare bones” indictment because it doesn’t include a statement of facts or the full story (it just lays out the charges):
The judge overseeing this case has set the next in-person hearing for December 4th, which is two months before the first 2024 Republican presidential primary. It’s also, obviously, a staggering eight months from now, which feels insane.
ADDED:
There has now also been a statement of facts released, which goes into detail on how and why Trump committed each of the crimes. I haven’t read it in full yet as I’ve just downloaded it, but here it is:
