Former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 felony charges connected to his alleged role in hush money payments to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump, the first former president ever indicted, delivered his plea in a Manhattan courtroom a few hours after turning himself in to authorities. All 34 counts he faces are for “falsifying business records,” a crime that carries a sentence of up to four years in prison when charged as a felony. Judges often sentence first-time offenders to probation, particularly in non-violent cases.
The unveiling of the charges will trigger a frenzied legal battle by Trump and his team to derail the case, which will unfold as he mounts a renewed bid for the White House in 2024. Prosecutors suggested a trial date of January 2024, but Trump’s attorney said that timeframe might be too ambitious, with a spring 2024 trial date more reasonable.
Trump declined to answer questions before stepping into the courtroom, striding stone-faced through the crowded courthouse hallways, flanked by a significant NYPD and Secret Service contingent. He sat at a table in the courtroom alongside attorneys Todd Blanche, Susan Necheles, Joe Tacopina and Boris Epshteyn. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was present for the proceeding as well. Trump entered the guilty plea himself and remained solemn, looking straight ahead, throughout the proceedings.
Although it’s the first time a former president has ever faced criminal charges, it may not be the last: At least three other criminal probes are circling around Trump. In Fulton County, Georgia, a district attorney is investigating Trump’s attempt to subvert that state’s results in the 2020 election, and in Washington D.C., a special counsel is investigating his role in attempting to derail the transfer of presidential power, as well as his handling of national security secrets after leaving office.
Assistant District Attorney Chris Conroy outlined the case against Trump during Tuesday’s proceedings, describing the alleged hush money scheme as an “unlawful plan to identify and suppress negative information … to avoid negative attention to his campaign.” Conroy also drew the judge’s attention to recent “threatening” public statements by Trump on social media, including Trump’s posting of a news article that included a photo of him holding a baseball bat juxtaposed with a picture of Bragg.
Conroy did not seek a gag order, despite preemptive complaints by some of Trump’s allies, and the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, emphasized that he would not impose one at this time.
Trump has railed against the hush money case and has called Bragg politically motivated. And he’s worked to turn the indictment into rocket fuel for his campaign and its coffers.
The charges emerged from a broad investigation Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., opened several years ago relating to Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who admitted that he arranged hush money payments at the height of the 2016 campaign to two women claiming past sexual liaisons with Trump: porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
After initially denying any wrongdoing, Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to two federal campaign-finance charges, admitting that the unreported payments were effectively donations to Trump’s campaign because they were intended to aid his candidacy. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on those charges, as well as tax and fraud offenses. Cohen said Trump directed him to pay the hush money and then, while he was president, reimbursed him through the Trump Organization in a series of payments that were falsely recorded as legal expenses.
No federal charges were ever filed against Trump, although Justice Department policy barring charges against a sitting president ruled out such a possibility until he left office in January 2021.
Vance’s initial investigation into Trump’s role in the hush money scheme seemed to peter out in favor of a higher-profile examination, also originating from claims made by Cohen, of pervasive tax and insurance fraud in Trump’s business empire. That investigation yielded a 2021 conviction of the Trump Organization and a guilty plea from its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who is currently serving a five-month prison sentence.
After Bragg took office in 2021, top prosecutors on the tax-fraud probe resigned, complaining that Bragg had balked at charging Trump himself in the probe. But the district attorney’s office eventually intensified its interest in the long-dormant hush money inquiry.
The two federal special counsel investigations and the Georgia probe had appeared to eclipse the New York case as the likeliest to result in charges against Trump until, within the last few weeks, signals emerged that charges were imminent from Bragg’s inquiry.
Just what rekindled prosecutors’ interest in that matter remains unclear. Trump and his allies have said the move was a response to political pressure on Bragg that resulted from his decision on the wider-ranging case and the subsequent resignation of the highly-respected lead prosecutor on that matter, Mark Pomerantz.
Trump’s attacks draw from a familiar playbook, leaning on powerful allies in Congress, friendly voices in conservative media and a social media megaphone to try to wrest control of the national dialogue. He has argued that the case Bragg mounted was left for dead, kept alive only by a Covid-extended statute of limitations even though prosecutors — and even Bragg himself — long seemed wary of bringing an indictment.
Outside the district attorney’s office on Tuesday, police had shut down streets leading to the primary entrance while helicopters buzzed overhead. Across the street from the courthouse, competing factions of anti- and pro-Trump protesters, featuring appearances by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, set up camp in a park, near where throngs of reporters and curious onlookers had slept overnight on the street to compete to gain access to Tuesday afternoon’s arraignment.
Trump, who lives in Florida, flew to Manhattan on Monday and stayed overnight in his Trump Tower penthouse before a motorcade, followed overhead by news helicopters, ferried him downtown Tuesday afternoon to face the charges.
