Donald Trump, the former president, was detained at the Miami federal courthouse and will shortly be arraigned on allegations of improper handling of sensitive data.
Trump under arrest at Miami courthouse: During Tuesday’s hearings, deputy marshals booked the former president and took digital copies of his fingerprints. Given his familiarity, they weren’t supposed to take a mugshot of Trump.
Walt Nauta, a co-defendant and assistant to Trump, has been taken into custody, processed, and fingerprinted.
The legal risk for the 2024 GOP front-runner increases due to the criminal accusations in the Justice Department’s case involving secret documents.
The Miami hearing on Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET is anticipated to be purely formal. Trump will plea, the terms of his pretrial release will be discussed, and potential limitations on Trump’s conduct moving forward could probably be raised.
In the Justice Department’s investigation into the materials, Trump is accused of violating witness-tampering rules and improperly retaining information for national defense on 37 felony counts.
Indictment Unsealed: Trump and Nauta Face Charges, Accused of Conspiring to Hinder FBI Investigation
The indictment, unsealed on Friday, also names Walt Nauta as a defendant and claims that the two men conspired to hinder the FBI investigation. Nauta will also make a court appearance.
Trump and Nauta departed Trump’s Doral resort in a motorcade on Tuesday. Nauta was in a different car. One of the onlookers questioned Trump about his mood as he climbed inside his car. With a “great” and a handshake, Trump remarked.
Before entering the courtroom, Trump said on social media that it was “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. We are a declining nation.
The hearing on Tuesday is just the beginning of what is sure to be a long, dramatic legal process, with criminal and appellate hearings that might go on for years. The case has been sent to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee whose last year’s decision to request a third-party review of an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago was roundly criticized and reversed by a conservative appeals court.
A magistrate judge, most likely Jonathan Goodman, the magistrate in charge in Miami this week, will preside over the proceedings on Tuesday.
What the hearing on Tuesday is about
The hearing on Tuesday will serve as both an “initial appearance” and an “arraignment,” with Trump having the chance to enter a plea in the matter.
The attorneys for Trump and Nauta will make court appearances on their behalf, and according to Florida law, the defendants must be represented by at least one attorney who is forbidden from practicing in the state.
Todd Blanche and Chris Kise are anticipated to represent Trump at his arraignment this afternoon, a person who knows the situation told CNN. Uncertainty surrounds Kise’s future status, and he was absent from the Mar-a-Lago search litigation last year due to internal strife in the Trump administration.
Another Florida-licensed lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, assisted with Trump’s legal action against the
As part of the proceedings on Tuesday, both defendants will be booked by the US Marshals Services, though under Justice Department guidelines, their mug pictures won’t be immediately made public.
The magistrate judge will review the bond package to let the defendants avoid jail time as they wait for trial during the hearing. It could be necessary for them to notify the court’s probation department before going somewhere. Additionally, the prosecution may request that Trump and Nauta be subject to limitations preventing them from speaking with witnesses.
The government is described as being represented by Jay Bratt, the counterintelligence head for the Justice Department, who has played a significant role in the investigation of the material. However, it’s possible that attorneys from the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, run by US Attorney Markenzy Lapointe, who the Senate confirmed in December, are also present on Tuesday. Who will represent Smith’s team at the proceedings? Will Smith personally attend?
the severity of the allegations
Before his federal indictment last week, Trump was also charged criminally by New York City’s local prosecutors for an alleged hush money plot during the 2016 campaign, in which he was charged with falsifying financial records.
The additional allegations in the DOJ papers case are significantly more serious and, if Trump is finally found guilty, carry a potential sentence of several years in prison.
Trump is charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, which is a charge regardless of whether the documents are secret or not. He is accused of making false statements and four counts relating to document concealing in addition to the obstruction conspiracy.
“In a case like this, obstruction and tampering help prove the main charge, that the defendant willfully engaged in the charged conduct,” said David Aaron, a former federal prosecutor in the espionage section of the DOJ’s national security division and a current senior counsel at Perkins Coie. These circumstances might also influence how a judge, jury, or the general public perceives the case and significantly impact the sentence.
What takes place next
One significant x-factor in the prosecution of the case is its assignment to Cannon, who sits in Ft. Pierce, Florida, but one of the judges selected at random to hear cases filed in West Palm Beach, where the new indictment was brought.
“There are few things more powerful than a district judge in a federal case,” asserted Alan Rozenshtein, a former attorney in the DOJ National Security Division who is now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “She could, if she wanted to, give the prosecution serious issues. Would these constitute existential issues? Most likely not.
Legal experts from all political perspectives were puzzled by Cannon’s handling of Trump’s complaint against the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search last year because it looked like she went above and beyond to establish special legal rules in the former president’s favor. Last December, a group of right-leaning appellate judges, including two Trump appointees, on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals dissected her justification for why such a review was required.
Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, says, “She got so beat up by the 11th Circuit that she might be ultra-cautious.” Just put, “We don’t know.”