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What to expect as Trump appears in federal court [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-06-13  

Donald Trump is slated to appear in federal court on Tuesday afternoon. Trump will be arrested, though it’s not clear if he will be fingerprinted or photographed—that’s standard procedure, but he got special treatment on those when he was arraigned in New York state court. The appearance is likely to serve as his arraignment, though it is formally billed as an initial court appearance.

Those are just a couple of the things that are unclear as the hour approaches for Trump to turn himself in on 37 federal criminal charges. He is likely to arrive at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. federal courthouse through an underground garage, and no cameras are allowed in the courtroom. However, in New York the public did get a few seconds of video of Trump moving through the courthouse. The public, including reporters, are allowed in the federal courtroom, so we are likely to get detailed descriptions of the proceedings once they are complete.

There are also big questions about what will happen outside the courthouse. Trump and an array of right-wing celebrities have called for rallies and protests by supporters, and there have been threats of violence on the pro-Trump social media sites. Law enforcement was preparing for significant crowds, but as of Tuesday morning, few Trump supporters were on the scene:

x At the Wilkie Ferguson courthouse in Miami for the first federal arraignment of a former U.S. president, there are just a handful of Trump supporters but about 200 members of the media pic.twitter.com/GXEwCBJSjg — Luke Broadwater☀️ (@lukebroadwater) June 13, 2023

All it takes is for the Proud Boys to show up en masse for things to get ugly, though.

Tuesday evening, Trump is planning to speak from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, likely attacking special counsel Jack Smith, members of Smith’s family, and members of his team of prosecutors. Following that, he will hold a campaign fundraiser as he continues using his legal peril to extract money from supporters.

Leading up to the court appearance, Trump has been scrambling to find a lawyer. Trump has lawyers, of course (though two of them resigned last week), but he needs a local counsel admitted to the Florida bar, and Florida lawyers keep turning him down. Christopher Kise, one member of Trump’s legal team, is a former Florida solicitor general, but he has reduced his role with Trump and doesn’t seem interested in serving as local counsel. Instead, he’s been searching for anyone who would take on the job, and being turned down repeatedly by attorneys who have looked at some combination of the following: the recent departures from Trump’s team, Trump’s habit of refusing to pay his bills, Trump’s habit of making public statements that undermine his legal case, and the documented allegation that Trump already lied to one of his attorneys in this case as part of his obstruction.

Appearing alongside Trump will be his longtime valet and now codefendant, Walt Nauta. Nauta faces six criminal charges for his role in moving boxes of documents and lying to federal investigators. That’s a lot by most standards, but it’s nothing compared with the 37 charges Trump faces. He’s charged with breaking seven different federal laws, but there are separate charges for each of 31 documents he illegally retained. Those 31 counts are for willful retention of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act. Trump is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statements and representations.

The contents of the indictment remain shocking, because while we’ve known for nearly a year that Trump took dozens of classified documents out of the White House and hid them at Mar-a-Lago, the indictment details the lengths he went to to conceal them, and the awareness he showed that he shouldn’t have them and certainly shouldn’t be showing them to visitors. The indictment shows that this wasn’t done casually, and it was done with intent. Tuesday’s court appearance is the next step in the criminal case against Trump, and prosecutors are obviously ready to prove their case.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/13/2175078/-What-to-expect-as-Trump-appears-in-federal-court

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