On Thursday, pro-Trump sentiment was muted, with only a few stray Trump supporters demonstrating outside the courthouse under a gray, overcast sky.
After turning himself into authorities, Trump was expected to be booked as a criminal defendant and then appear briefly before Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya to enter a plea. Although Upadhyaya is presiding over the arraignment, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has been assigned to handle the case and will likely preside over most future court appearances.
Trump attacked Chutkan in a social media post a few hours before he came to court, calling her “unfair.” Chutkan, an Obama appointee, ruled against Trump in 2021 when she allowed the House Jan. 6 select committee to access Trump’s White House records. Much of the evidence in those records has now resurfaced in the new indictment.
The arraignment is Trump’s third since April — an extraordinary sequence for a nation in which no president or former president had ever been indicted until Trump was indicted in three cases this year. As he mounts a bid to return to the White House, those three prosecutions seek to hold him criminally culpable for a diverse range of conduct that he undertook both during and after his presidency.
One case, brought by New York City prosecutors, accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. Another, brought by the special counsel, accuses him of hoarding classified documents after he left the White House. And the newest case from Smith’s team accuses Trump of orchestrating a conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election.
He may soon face yet another criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis expects to announce charges soon in her investigation into election interference in that state.