Former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to dozens of criminal counts of mishandling some of the US government’s most sensitive secrets and scheming to prevent their return, in a historic first court appearance as a federal defendant.
The former president — and the favorite to fight next year’s US presidential election for the Republicans — gave himself up to US Marshals in Miami for a hearing that set up the unprecedented scenario of a White House race litigated from the courtroom as well as at the ballot box.
On the eve of his 77th birthday, Trump appeared before a magistrate judge to be formally presented with 37 counts under seven charges brought by a special counsel probe that opened after an FBI raid of his Florida mansion 10 months ago.
Photo: Reuters
However, he dismissed his prosecution as politically motivated in a speech to supporters framing the indictment as an effort to interfere in next year’s election.
“Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. Very sad thing to watch,” Trump said after returning to his summer residence in New Jersey.
The hearing — just weeks after Trump denied state-level financial fraud charges in a separate case in Manhattan — came with the former reality TV star’s mounting legal woes threatening to derail his bid to return to the Oval Office.
The US government — which has never before prosecuted a former president — accuses Trump of contravening the Espionage Act and other laws when he removed classified documents upon leaving office in 2021 and failed to give them up to the US National Archives.
Authorities say he conspired to thwart investigators and knowingly shared national security secrets with people who did not have the requisite clearance.
After the hearing Trump jetted from Miami back to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he blamed US President Joe Biden for his prosecution.
“A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges — of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty — right in the middle of a presidential election, in which he’s losing very badly,” Trump said, speaking from the front of the clubhouse, at a podium flanked by US flags.
He was cheered by several hundred supporters, including 100 members of a conservative organization of Vietnamese Americans who had donned matching red dresses and chanted: “We love Trump.”
Trump enjoys strong backing from Republican voters, 81 percent of whom believe the charges against him are politically driven, according to a new Ipsos poll.
The government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Trump since officials discovered that his correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was missing, US media reported.
The records were the work of top national security and law enforcement agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency, prosecutors said, and some concerned the military and nuclear capabilities of the US and foreign countries, and “plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
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