Former president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in connection with his alleged mishandling of classified documents on Tuesday afternoon in a Miami, Fla., federal court.
“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said in court, according to the Washington Post.
Trump traveled in a motorcade from his Doral resort to the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. courthouse around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday for his arraignment, which marked the first time a former president appeared before a federal judge on criminal charges. Hundreds of his supporters and hundreds of journalists from around the world awaited his arrival in the 90-degree heat.
“ON MY WAY TO COURTHOUSE. WITCH HUNT!!! MAGA,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Those counts include willful retention of national-defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and making false statements and representations.
The indictment includes evidence that Trump knew he had possession of “secret” and “highly confidential” documents that he had not declassified. Trump allegedly had dozens of boxes at his Mar-a-Lago residence that held materials including documents about the defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, U.S. nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies, and plans for a possible retaliation in case of a foreign attack, according to the indictment.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has dismissed the investigation as politically motivated.
Trump attorney Alina Habba spoke to reporters after Trump entered the courthouse on Tuesday and said, “What we are witnessing today is the blatant and unapologetic weaponization of the criminal justice system.”
The former president has called the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” He called for protests on Sunday afternoon during a radio interview with his longtime ally Roger Stone. Stone encouraged protesters to remain peaceful, civil, and legal.
Federal and local authorities worked to increase security in South Florida ahead of Trump’s first appearance at the Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday as Trump allies alluded to potential protests and violence and called the indictment politically-motivated and worthy of retribution.
Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana tweeted out a more ominous instruction: “President Trump said he has ‘been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.’ This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”
Radicalization expert and author Jeff Sharlet warned that Higgins’s post “isn’t a metaphor” but a “congressman calling for the real thing.” Higgins’s post includes references to the “real president of the United States,” as well as military-scale maps and guerrilla warfare tactics.
A Miami-Dade police Homeland Security Bureau advisory to other agencies, which was first obtained by the Washington Post, mentions a tweet from Laura Loomer about a “peaceful rally” outside of the Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday at noon.
Authorities have also warned about plans for a pro-Trump rally outside the federal courthouse on Tuesday that has allegedly been planned by a local chapter of the Proud Boys. Some leaders of the far-right extremist group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot.
Meanwhile, Trump’s second indictment has led even some Republicans to suggest he should drop out of the 2024 presidential race, including former national-security adviser John Bolton and Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson.
Trump, for his part, vowed to “never leave” the race.
“I’ll never leave,” Trump told a Politico reporter. “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.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said.
Trump went on to say that “nobody wants 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,” he said.
The classified documents indictment comes after Trump was indicted in March by a Manhattan grand jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to hush-money payments that his former attorney, Michael Cohen, made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.
In May, a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for battery and defamation after hearing evidence in E. Jean Carroll’s federal lawsuit accusing the former president of rape nearly 30 years ago in the dressing room of a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman. The jury found that Trump most likely sexually assaulted Carroll, but rejected the allegation that he raped her. They further found that Trump then defamed Carroll in an October 2022 Truth Social post in which he called the allegation “a hoax.”
Trump is also facing an investigation into his alleged role in effort to reverse the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and could be indicted by the Fulton County prosecutor as part of that probe.
Trump aide Waltine Nauta has been charged alongside the former president as part of the classified documents investigation. Nauta, a Navy veteran who went to work as Trump’s personal aide at Mar-a-Lago after the 2020 election, is facing six charges as part of the classified documents probe, including conspiracy to obstruct, withholding a document or record and scheme to conceal, according to the 49-page federal indictment that was unsealed on Friday.
Surveillance footage allegedly showed Nauta moving boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago before and after the DOJ issued a subpoena in May 2022 demanding all classified documents be returned.