Trump, arraigned in New York, pleads not guilty to charges related to hush-money payment

WASHINGTON – In a historic scene in New York City on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to felony charges after Manhattan prosecutors accused him of illegally covering up a hush-money payment to head off a potential sex scandal during the 2016 election.

The 34 counts all relate to a $130,000 payment Trump’s former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, made to porn actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, after she threatened to publicly allege she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which the former president denies. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to those payments and is expected to serve as a key witness in the case against Trump.

In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges Trump falsified business records when he reimbursed Cohen for that payment, writing a series of checks that internal company documents listed as legal fees. In a document that accompanies the indictment, prosecutors assert those actions served “to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public” in an effort to influence the election.

Falsifying business records is normally a misdemeanor, but Bragg is relying on a largely untested legal argument to raise them to felony charges, alleging that Trump falsified documents in order to violate election laws. The indictment doesn’t specify whether those are state laws, over which Bragg has jurisdiction, or federal laws.

“As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure everyone stands equal before the law,” Bragg told reporters after Trump appeared in court. “No amount of money and no amount of power changes that enduring American principle.”

The arraignment was the latest unprecedented chapter in the saga of a man who has defied precedent since he won the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Further complicating matters, Trump is now running for another term in the White House after losing in 2020.

“He’s frustrated, he’s upset,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told reporters after the arraignment. “But I’ll tell you what: He’s motivated and it’s not going to stop him and it’s not going to slow him down.”

Bragg, a Democrat, campaigned on his record of investigating Trump’s family and business, prompting critics to call his decision to indict the former president politically motivated.

Jim McDevitt, a Republican who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington from 2001 to 2010, said that while he isn’t personally a fan of Trump, he sees the indictment as part of a concerning trend toward politicizing the justice system.

“I don’t care whether it’s Republican or Democrat,” said McDevitt, who served under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “That completely erodes public confidence in the justice system and our law enforcement.”

Cornell Clayton, a professor of government at Washington State University, said that prosecutors’ decisions always involve politics – for instance, whether to prioritize white-collar crimes or drug offenses.

“In a case involving a former president of the United States and a current candidate for the presidency, there is no question that there has to be political calculations involved,” said Clayton, who leads WSU’s Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service. “So the question isn’t whether there are political calculations or concerns involved. It’s whether or not they’re illegitimate political calculations.”

Even some who support prosecuting Trump, however, have worried publicly since his indictment was announced Thursday that the case brought by Bragg is relatively weak compared to other possible cases against the former president. Separately, state and federal prosecutors are investigating Trump for pressuring Georgia officials to change the 2020 election results, for mishandling classified documents and for encouraging his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Whatever the outcome of the Manhattan case, Clayton said, the fact that “no one is really discussing the tawdriness of the underlying conduct” reflects “the continued debasement of American politics and ideals of public service,” nearly a quarter-century after former President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex with a White House intern.

During the arraignment, New York Judge Juan Merchan urged Trump to refrain from publicly attacking Bragg or making comments that could stoke public unrest. But in a primetime address from his Florida home after returning from New York on Tuesday night, Trump immediately lit into the district attorney, calling Bragg a “radical-left” prosecutor.

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”

The indictment – the first of either a sitting or former president – will test the nation’s institutions and force the prosecutors investigating Trump to navigate uncharted political territory.

“We don’t want to, as a country, fall into the undemocratic tradition where we criminalize political disagreements,” Clayton said. “But I think it’s equally true that you can’t have a democracy without holding those in power accountable, and the whole point of having constitutional democracy is that those who hold power are not above the law.”

Trump’s next court date is set for Dec. 4, and a trial could take place in 2024, potentially while he is campaigning in GOP presidential primaries. The charges against Trump each carry a maximum sentence of four years in prison, but a conviction or even imprisonment would not legally bar him from winning the presidency.