Trump Arrest Live: How Ex-US President's Arraignment Day Unfolds | World news | Breaking | Live News
Donald Trump Arraignment News Live Updates: Donald Trump made a momentous court appearance Tuesday as the only ex-president to be charged with a crime as he was confronted with a 34-count felony indictment accusing him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs during his first White House campaign.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. His next court appearance is due in December. returned to his Florida home later in the day, saying that he never thought anything like this could happen in America. Trump is one of the frontrunners to become the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential elections.
Trump was indicted last week, becoming the first sitting or former president to face criminal charges, over a case involving a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. He has said he is innocent. Trump supporters, many of whom wore red hats, criticised the district attorney’s conduct, while counter-protestors celebrated the indictment.
What US President Trump’s arrest might mean for American politics is perhaps less important than what it will mean for Americans in their daily lives.
In the short run, it will mean more rants, rage posts and blocks on social media. It will mean breakups and brawls, and all the rifts of the sort that friends and families have gone through ever since that fateful election of 2016 which seemed to up-end reality itself to some in America, leading to walkouts from schools and tears over Hillary Clinton’s failure to make history as expected.
In the longer run though, what it might mean poses a bigger question: If Americans cannot agree on the deepening divides in their country, what further escapes will they, or their leaders, pursue in place of that inevitable duty towards the truth that every sane person might demand from the world? (Read more)
Former US president Donald Trump spoke just six times, including when he entered the not guilty plea, before a judge in a Manhattan court during the nearly hour-long hearing at his arraignment, according to court records.
When Merchan said “Let’s arraign Mr Trump,” the court clerk responded, “Donald J. Trump, the grand jury of New York County has filed indictment 71543 of 2023 charging you with the crimes of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. How do you plead to this indictment, guilty or not guilty?” Trump replied, “Not guilty.”
When Merchan said “Mr. Trump, as you know, you have an absolute right to conflict-free representation. The People have alleged that there is a potential, Mr. (Joseph) Tacopina has a conflict, and the basis for their belief is that he may have represented a former client who is a witness in this case….I simply want to inform you that because it is an important right. I also want to — first, do you understand that right, Mr. Trump?” Trump replied “Yes.” (Read more)
On Tuesday, Trump arrived at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse at around 12.20 pm local time (9.50 pm IST), travelling in an 8-car motorcade from his residence about 6 km away. He surrendered at the court, and was fingerprinted and processed.
Clad in a signature navy blue suit and red tie, he reached the 15th-floor courtroom over an hour after he first entered the building, local media reported. Trump spoke six times in court, in one of which he told the judge that he was pleading “not guilty” to the 34 felony counts. He also said that he had been advised of his rights. The ex-President left around an hour later.
Trump's next court appearance is due in December, but his lawyers have asked that he be excused from having to appear in person because of the extensive security required.
No date has been set for a trial.
While prosecutors are pushing for a date in January (before the 2024 presidential polls), Trump's lawyers have asked that it be pushed to March.
The criminal case against former President Donald Trump, unveiled on Tuesday, rests not just on his high-profile alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels but also on a separate liaison with Playboy model Karen McDougal.
A 52-year-old former model and actress from Indiana, McDougal was a Playboy magazine Playmate of the Year in the late 1990s.
She has said she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Trump has denied having a sexual relationship with her. (Read more)
Adult film star Stormy Daniels has been ordered to pay, over $120,000 in legal fees to the attorneys of former US President Donald Trump, by a federal appeals court in California.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday (local time) ordered Daniels to pay Trump's attorneys just over $120,000 in legal fees. That's on top of the over $500,000 in court-ordered payments to Trump attorneys that she has to pay.
Daniels had filed and lost a defamation suit against the former president, reported CNN.
The order was delivered on the same day that a Manhattan court arraigned Trump on 34 charges related to alleged hush money payments to Daniels to cover up a purported affair between the two. (ANI)
The unsealed indictment against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday laid out an unexpected accusation that bolstered what many legal experts have described as an otherwise risky and novel case: Prosecutors claim he falsified business records in part for a plan to deceive state tax authorities.
For weeks, observers have wondered about the exact charges Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would bring. Accusing Trump of bookkeeping fraud to conceal campaign finance violations, many believed, could raise significant legal challenges. That accusation turned out to be a major part of Bragg’s theory — but not all of it. (Read more)
When the news of Donald Trump’s indictment on criminal charges by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg became official last Thursday, the former President called it (incongruously) an unprecedented “attack on our once free and fair elections”. In an all-caps posting on Truth Social, he declared, “The USA is now a third world nation, a nation in serious decline”. Others in Trump-land, including his sons, repeated the same charge comparing the indictment on charges related to hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels with the actions of “third world” dictators and “banana republicans” — as Trump ally Karry Lake put it— against political opponents.
This is not the first time that phrases like third world dictatorship and banana republic have been bandied about in the context of Trump’s shenanigans. And it is not only Trump and his allies who have used this language. While criticising the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, former president George W Bush said, “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic.”