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.
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 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.
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 former 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: adult film actress 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 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.
Initial investigation by Vance’s office of the campaign-finance accusations 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 charges in 2021 against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
However, after Bragg took office in 2021, top prosecutors on that probe resigned complaining that he’d balked at charging Trump himself in that tax-fraud-focused investigation. 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 probe in Fulton County, Georgia, 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 (R-Ga.) and George Santos (R-N.Y.), 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.
Trump’s surrender marks the first time he has entered the office he has accused of political bias against him, calling District Attorney Alvin Bragg an “animal” and “racist.”
Bragg has not responded directly to Trump, but did defend the indictment against GOP attacks. Bragg planned to hold a press conference on Tuesday after Trump’s arraignment.
Danielle Muoio Dunn contributed to this report.
