What You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Upcoming Court Arraignment
Facing escalating legal challenges following his third indictment, former US President Donald Trump is slated to make an appearance at the federal courthouse for his arraignment on Thursday. The charges brought against him involve conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and inciting his supporters to storm the US Capitol Hill.
Preparations have been put in place outside the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington, including the erection of metal barricades, in anticipation of the “arrest and arraignment” proceedings of Donald Trump.
The 77-year-old Trump is anticipated to enter a plea of not guilty during a hearing scheduled for 4:00 pm before magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya.
The allegations, which assert that Trump and six unnamed co-conspirators conspired to disrupt the 2020 election, represent the third criminal indictment against the former president since March and are the most severe among the cases that pose a threat to his White House aspirations.
Deliberate False Claims by Donald Trump
On Tuesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled a 45-page indictment charging Trump with conspiracy to defraud the US and attempting to disenfranchise voters through false claims of winning the 2020 election.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud,” the indictment stated.
Jack Smith directly linked Trump’s post-election actions to the assault on the Capitol, which he characterized as an “unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
The Special Counsel remarked, “It was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government — the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Trump is already scheduled to stand trial in Florida in May of the following year on charges related to taking classified government documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate and refusing to return them.
The twice-impeached president also faces criminal charges in New York for allegedly making pre-election hush payments to an adult film star.
Trump has entered a plea of not guilty in both the documents and hush money cases and has accused prosecutors of attempting to undermine his presidential bid with “baseless” charges.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump alleged that Thursday’s case was “brought by Crooked Joe Biden & Deranged Jack Smith,” further claiming that “this Indictment is all about Election Interference!”
While Trump’s arraignment will take place before a magistrate judge, the case itself will be presided over by US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, who has issued some of the harshest sentences in cases involving participants of the Capitol riot.
Previously, Trump had filed a lawsuit asserting executive privilege to prevent documents from being handed over to a congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
At the time of these events, Trump was no longer in the White House. Judge Chutkan dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the former president’s argument “appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity’.”
“But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan asserted.
During his presidency, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges related to soliciting political information on Biden from Ukraine and for his role in the events of January 6. He was acquitted by the Senate in both instances.
