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      Trump supporters condemn January 6 charges after third arraignment this year

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      It’s the third time Donald Trump has been arraigned this year, even as he is the only former US president in history to face criminal charges. Each time, Trump and his supporters, as well as detractors, have moved to gain from his time in court.Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday in a Washington federal court to three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction in a plot to subvert the results of the 2020 election. He similarly denied his guilt in March over hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and then in June for illegally hoarding classified documents at his Florida resort.A handful of Republicans, though competing with Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, fired off statements as the ex-president left the courthouse and returned to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy posted a video message filmed outside the federal courthouse calling the January 6 indictment “politicized persecution.” He earlier vowed to pardon Trump if elected.After Trump was indicted on Tuesday, the former vice-president Mike Pence – whom Trump allegedly called “too honest” after he refused to reject electoral votes according to the indictment – used the arraignment as fodder for his own campaign, including to sell merch. “[A]nyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said in a statement.Trump has also moved to profit from each of his own indictments, blasting supporters with a barrage of fundraising requests after his court appearances in Miami and New York.Minutes after Trump left Washington, his son, Eric Trump, sent out a fundraising email with language calling the city “the belly of the beast”, according to NBC News. His campaign pulled in nearly $4m after his first arraignment in March and considerably less but still more than $1m after his arraignment in June, according to the New York Times.Trump earlier said being arrested was “a great honor” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. He also posted Thursday ahead of his arraignment: “I NEED ONE MORE INDICTMENT TO ENSURE MY ELECTION!”A district attorney, Fani Willis, is due to hand down a fourth indictment, related to election interference in Georgia, in the coming weeks.Conservative media outlets largely heaped praise on Trump while blasting the current probes against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. When asked by a CNN reporter if he would follow the indictment as he was cycling on vacation, the president said: “No.”Fox News host Jesse Watters downplayed Trump’s January 6 charges on air while applauding Trump for his “calm demeanor” during the arraignment, according to Mediaite. “By this January 6th indictment, we’re kind of tired of it,” Watters said on Thursday evening.Trump has seemingly grown more comfortable with each indictment, according to NBC News’ Garrett Haake, who has covered each indictment from the ground.While Trump appeared “tight and tense” on his March court date in Manhattan, he was joking with his attorneys in Washington, Haake told MSNBC Thursday evening. “He seemed so much more comfortable and practised at this.”For many, the federal charges against Trump for his role in inciting the violence at the US Capitol were the first steps to finally holding the ex-president accountable for the deadly attack over which 1,000 individuals have been charged. A US Capitol police officer, Sgt Aquilino Gonell, was in the courtroom where Trump appeared for his arraignment, along with two other officers who were overwhelmed by rioters.“On that day, I risked my life defending everyone regardless of their political affiliation,” wrote Gonell in a statement released after Trump left the courthouse. “Our democracy is worth fighting for. Not prosecuting is far riskier than having no consequences for the alleged power grab attempts. Justice and the rule of law must win for our democracy to survive.”Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House January 6 select committee, signed a letter along with dozens of other Democratic lawmakers urging the district court to publicly broadcast the trial proceedings. “It is imperative the conference ensures timely access to accurate and reliable information surrounding these cases and all of their proceedings, given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency,” the letter said.After the Tuesday indictment, Schiff said in a statement posted online the law “must” be enforced against a former US president and candidate for “the sake of our democracy”.Trump attorney John Lauro, who joined the legal team after special prosecutor Jack Smith informed the ex-president he was a target in the January 6 case, suggested moving the trial to West Virginia, which he called a more “diverse area” than DC in an interview with NPR ahead of the arraignment. Former federal prosecutors and legal experts said there was no basis for doing so.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is the strongest contender for the Republican nomination after Trump, though trailing by a wide margin, said in a statement released after the Tuesday indictment that he would “end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans”.DeSantis did not, however, refer to Trump by name, and said he did not read the indictment. More

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      Donald Trump’s January 6 indictment – podcast

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      “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on 6 January 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” special counsel Jack Smith said on Tuesday. “As described in the indictment, it was fuelled by lies.” Donald Trump has been charged over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The former president faces four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump, who is leading the polls in the Republican candidate race for the 2024 election, has been charged in three criminal indictments since leaving office. Hugo Lowell, a reporter at the Guardian’s Washington bureau, takes Michael Safi through the case outlined in the latest indictment and what it could mean for the upcoming election. More

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      Trump pleads not guilty to four charges over efforts to overturn 2020 election

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      Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, marking the third time this year that the former president has been forced to respond to a criminal indictment.Trump was arrested and arraigned on four felony counts outlined in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.The arraignment came two days after Smith’s office filed its indictment, accusing Trump of executing a “criminal scheme” to remain in office even after it became clear that he had fairly lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.Trump traveled from his Bedminster Club in New Jersey to Washington on Thursday with his lawyers and several top aides to appear at the arraignment. He was formally arrested at the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, just blocks from the US Capitol, where the deadly January 6 insurrection unfolded.Sitting in the courtroom Thursday, Trump was accompanied by two of his attorneys, John Laura and Todd Blanche. Smith also attended the arraignment, which was overseen by US magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya. After entering his plea of not guilty, Trump was released on the conditions that he adhere to all federal, state and local laws and avoid discussing the case with any witnesses. The next hearing in the case has been set for 28 August.Smith’s 45-page indictment asserts that Trump and his associates disseminated lies alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election while convening slates of fake electors in key battleground states. The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment.While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark. According to Smith’s indictment, Trump and his associates’ relentless campaign of misinformation culminated in the insurrection, which claimed the lives of at least seven people.“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment reads. “So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”The charges in Washington represented the second indictment filed by Smith, who previously charged Trump in June with retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. That case is currently scheduled to go to trial in May 2024.Trump has also been indicted in an unrelated case by the Manhattan district attorney, who charged him over hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He is expected to be indicted a fourth time in Georgia, where he may face racketeering charges over his election subversion efforts.Trump’s legal team has already sought to delay the trials in New York and Florida, arguing the cases should not move forward until after the 2024 presidential election. Trump remains the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary, and his nomination would set up a rematch against Biden in the general election next November.But Smith said Tuesday that his office would “seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post shared to his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said he viewed the indictment as “a great honor because I am being arrested for you”, speculating that the criminal charges would actually bolster his presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who is currently on vacation in Delaware, maintained his silence on the arraignment, ignoring reporters’ questions about the case.Trump also demanded that his case be moved out of Washington to “an impartial Venue, such as the politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia”, where he won by 39 points in 2020. Writing on Truth Social, Trump claimed it would be “impossible” to receive a fair trial in Washington, which he lost by 87 points in 2020. The chances of a court venue charge appear slim, given that similar arguments in other federal January 6 cases have proven unsuccessful.As Trump made his way to Washington for the arraignment, some of his supporters gathered outside the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse to welcome the former president. Anti-Trump protesters also congregated outside the courthouse, holding signs that read, “Save our democracy!” and “Lock him up”.Upadhyaya oversaw the Thursday hearing because magistrate judges typically handle the more routine or procedural aspects of court cases, such as arraignments, but the case itself has been assigned to US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama.Chutkan is expected to set a trial date at the next hearing, but Trump’s lawyers already indicated Thursday they disagree with Smith’s push for a speedy timeline.“All we would ask, Your Honor, is the opportunity to fairly defend our client,” Lauro said. “But in order to do that, we’re going to need a little time.” More

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      Who is Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to Trump’s January 6 case?

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      A federal judge who has emerged as one of the toughest authorities against rioters who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol will soon meet her most high-profile defendant: Donald Trump.Tanya Chutkan, a 2014 appointee of former president Barack Obama, was randomly assigned to oversee the case on Tuesday after a federal grand jury indicted the former president on four counts related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election, including conspiracy and obstruction of official proceedings.Chutkan was born in Jamaica, where she trained as a classical dancer, and moved to the US where she attended George Washington University before earning her JD at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, according to the DC district court website. She worked as a public defender in DC for a decade before joining the private law firm where she specialized in “litigation and white-collar criminal defense”.Chutkan has ruled on a Trump case before. She once blocked an attempt by Trump to refuse the House January 6 select committee’s request for White House files in the months after the election. That decision released mounds of evidence that shaped the committee’s investigation, according to Politico.In her November 2021 ruling, Chutkan described the attack as an “unprecedented attempt to prevent the lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next [that] caused property damage, injuries, and death”.But that case involved only legal questions about court proceedings and did not require her to rule on Trump’s role in the riot.Chutkan is also the only judge who has delivered stricter sentences against January 6 defendants than requested by federal prosecutors. In December 2021, she imposed the longest sentence at the time for a January 6 rioter – 63 months in jail for Robert Palmer, a Florida man who sprayed Capitol police with a fire extinguisher.“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said at his sentencing, justifying lengthy jail time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEleanor Norton, the US congresswoman who has represented DC since 1991, recommended Chutkan, then a partner at a private law firm, to the post in 2013, according to a press release at the time. Chutkan became the third Black woman ever to serve on the sole DC district court, joining Ketanji B Jackson, now a supreme court justice, on the bench in 2014.A different federal judge, Moxila A Upadhyaya, presided over Trump’s arraignment at a federal courthouse in DC on Thursday afternoon. More

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      Pence says Trump and his ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ urged him to reject 2020 result

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      Mike Pence has lashed out at the “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” who worked with Donald Trump to allegedly try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as the former vice-president found himself thrust into an unwelcome spotlight.Trump was charged with four felonies this week over his attempts to meddle with the presidential election. The 45-page indictment shows that Pence was a crucial figure in Jack Smith, the special counsel, being able to bring those charges.“Contemporaneous notes” taken by Pence, and referred to in the indictment, document how Trump and his advisers pressured Pence to reject the certification of the election in January, which could have resulted in the House of Representatives handing Trump a second-term in office.On Wednesday, as Trump and his legal team attempted to downplay those efforts – one of Trump’s lawyers suggested that they only asked Pence to do “pause the voting” on January 6 – the usually meek Pence reacted angrily.“Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” he told Fox News.“The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.”The former vice-president is unlikely to be thrilled with his newly central role in Trump’s indictment. Pence is running – so far unsuccessfully – for president himself, and is already unpopular with a Republican base which is still largely in thrall to Trump.Along with the notes which Smith used, among other sources, to build the case against Trump, Pence also spent seven hours before a grand jury investigating Trump in April.According to the indictment, Trump repeatedly pressured Pence to reject electoral votes in phone calls across late December and early January, including on Christmas Day.“On December 25, when the vice-president called the defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas, the defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and his request that the vice-president reject electoral votes that day,” the indictment reads.“The vice-president pushed back, telling the defendant, as the vice-president already had in previous conversations: ‘You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome’.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPence, who was a notably obsequious figure through the majority of Trump’s presidency, had earlier stood up to Trump, a little bit, on Twitter.“Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence tweeted on Tuesday.“Our country is more important than one man. Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career. On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will.” More

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      Trump will appear in court to respond to charges of election subversion efforts

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      Donald Trump was scheduled to surrender to federal authorities in Washington on Thursday afternoon and enter a not guilty plea to charges that he conspired to defraud the United States among other crimes in seeking to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.The twice-impeached former president, who has now been indicted three times since leaving the White House, was expected to be booked and fingerprinted in the federal district court before being escorted to his arraignment, which has been set for 4pm.Trump was expected to make his first appearance in the case in person, according to people briefed on the matter, and to travel for the arraignment from his Bedminster club in New Jersey to Washington with his lawyers and several top campaign staffers.The initial appearance from Trump to enter a plea formally starts the months-long pre-trial process that will run into the timetable for his other criminal trials next year and the 2024 presidential race, where Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.The charges in Washington came in the second indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, who previously charged Trump in June with retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.Trump has also been indicted in an unrelated case by the Manhattan district attorney, who charged him over hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He is expected to be indicted a fourth time over 2020 election-related charges in Georgia.Thursday’s arraignment follows the release of a 45-page indictment alleging fundamentally that Trump convened fake slates of electors and sought “sham election investigations” from the justice department in order to obstruct the certification of the election result in an attempt to remain president.The indictment also listed six co-conspirators who were not charged in the indictment. While they were unnamed, the descriptions of five of the six matched those of the Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro as well as the former US justice department official Jeff Clark.Thursday’s hearing in the courthouse – just blocks from the Capitol building, where Trump’s efforts to reverse his election defeat to Joe Biden culminated in the January 6 riot – was expected to be overseen by US magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya.Magistrate judges typically handle the more routine or procedural aspects of court cases, such as arraignments, but the case itself has been assigned to US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama.In 2021, Chutkan was the judge who rejected Trump’s attempt to block the House January 6 select committee investigating the Capitol riot from gaining access to presidential records. “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president,” she wrote at the time. More

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      Trump valet lawyer has three potential conflicts of interest, prosecutors say

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      Federal prosecutors requested a hearing to inform Donald Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, about his lead lawyer’s potential conflicts of interest stemming from his defense work for at least three witnesses that could testify against Nauta and the former president in the classified documents case.The prosecutors made the request to US district court judge Aileen Cannon on Wednesday, explaining that Nauta’s lead lawyer, Stanley Woodward, represents two key Trump employees and formerly advised the Mar-a-Lago IT director, Yuscil Taveras, who is cooperating in the case.“All three of these witnesses may be witnesses for the government at trial, raising the possibility that Mr Woodward might be in the position of cross-examining past or current clients,” prosecutors wrote in the 11-page court filing. “These potential conflicts warrant a Garcia hearing.”At issue is Woodward’s prior representation of Taveras during the grand jury investigation earlier this year, when prosecutors concluded that Taveras had evidence that incriminated Nauta and had enough of his own legal exposure to warrant sending him a target letter.After Trump and Nauta were indicted in the classified documents case on 8 June, Taveras changed lawyers and swapped out Woodward, whose legal bills were being paid by Trump’s political action committee Save America, and retained a new lawyer on 5 July.In the weeks that followed, Taveras decided to share more evidence with prosecutors about how Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira had asked him to delete surveillance footage – details that resulted last week in a superseding indictment against Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira.Trump and Nauta were charged last month in a sprawling indictment that outlined how Trump retained national security documents and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them with the help of Nauta, who was seen moving boxes of documents on surveillance tapes, and lied to the FBI.The superseding indictment, filed in federal district court in Miami, added a new section titled “The Attempt to Delete Security Camera Footage” that described a scheme to wipe a server containing surveillance footage that showed boxes of classified documents being removed from the Mar-a-Lago storage room.The court filing said that Taveras told prosecutors he was unopposed to Woodward continuing to represent Nauta, but did not consent to Woodward using or disclosing his confidential deliberations in the course of defending Nauta.That would mean Woodward could face some limits in how vigorously he could defend Nauta at trial, since he might be obligated to stand down certain arguments he might have otherwise used to attack Taveras’s testimony during cross-examination.“An attorney’s cross-examination of a former or current client raises two principal dangers. First, the conflict may result in the attorney’s improper use or disclosure of the client’s confidences during the cross-examination. Second, the conflict may cause the attorney to pull his punches,” the filing said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWoodward could not immediately be reached for comment, but he has previously indicated he would file a motion in response.In their court filing, prosecutors added there could be additional conflicts for Woodward because out of the eight total witnesses who were ensnared by the grand jury investigation, the government intended to use at least two of them against Trump and Nauta at trial.The first witness “worked in the White House during Trump’s presidency and then subsequently worked for Trump’s post-presidential office in Florida” and the second “worked for Trump’s reelection campaign and worked for Trump’s political action committee after Trump’s presidency ended”.That raised the possibility of Woodward having multiple clients testifying against each other, and ultimately against Trump, with whom Nauta is said to be in an informal joint-defense agreement, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s new indictment: America needs this trial | Editorial

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      The indictment served on Donald Trump on Monday marks the beginning of a legal reckoning that is desperately required, if American democracy is to properly free itself from his malign, insidious influence. Mr Trump already faces multiple criminal charges relating to the retention of classified national security documents and the payment of hush money to a porn star. But the gravity of the four counts outlined by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is of a different order of magnitude.Mr Trump stands accused of conspiring, in office, to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Following Joe Biden’s victory, the indictment states, Mr Trump “knowingly” used false claims of electoral fraud in an attempt “to subvert the legitimate election results”. A bipartisan congressional committee report last year came to similar conclusions and provides much of the basis for the charges. But this represents the first major legal attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for events leading up to and including the storming of the Capitol by a violent mob on 6 January 2021.The stakes could hardly be set higher. Democratic elections and the peaceful transfer of power are the cornerstones of the American republic. The testimony given to Congress indicates that Mr Trump used his authority to try to bully federal and state officials into supporting his claims that the election had been “stolen” from him. Repeatedly told that his assertions were baseless, he then mobilised a hostile crowd on 6 January to intimidate lawmakers charged with ratifying Mr Biden’s victory.It is inconceivable that Mr Trump should not be made to answer for actions that imperilled the constitutional and democratic functioning of the United States. The prosecutors’ case will hinge on their ability to prove that he knew his claims of a stolen election were bogus. But beyond the trial itself, it would be foolish to underestimate Mr Trump’s ability to turn even this situation to his own political advantage.The legal fronts on which Mr Trump is now engaged will drain his financial resources. But a narrative of victimhood and persecution has become, and will remain, the galvanising theme of his campaign. Two previous criminal indictments saw his poll ratings lift, helping him to establish a huge lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, a sizable proportion of American voters will continue to back Mr Trump’s self-serving version of reality.One of the most dangerously polarising elections in US history thus looms as, over the next 15 months, Mr Trump uses political cunning to evade the legal net that is closing around him. Through his lawyers, he will do all he can to delay matters, hoping eventually to dictate the course of events from the White House. For his part, Mr Smith said on Monday that the justice department will seek “a speedy trial”.It is in the interests of American democracy, to which Mr Trump represents a clear and present danger, that the justice department gets its wish. A healthy body politic cannot allow its founding values and core principles to be trashed with apparent impunity. Prosecutors will need to proceed with care and be alert to the complex political dynamics. But this climactic reckoning in court needs to take place before Mr Trump gets the chance to besmirch the country’s highest office all over again. More