Former President Donald Trump has been arrested at the federal courthouse in Miami and is being arraigned on charges related to mishandling classified documents.
Deputy marshals have booked the former president and taken electronic copies of his fingerprints during Tuesday’s proceedings. Given his recognizability, they were not expected to take a mugshot of Trump.
Tuesday’s hearing, at 3 p.m. ET in Miami, is expected to be procedural in nature.
Trump is facing 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents violating witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.
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But Trump maintains his innocence.
He has vowed to plead “not guilty” and said he would never drop out of the presidential race.
In his first public speech since his indictment on Saturday, Trump persistently ripped on Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Department of Justice, and the FBI and pledged to oust President Joe Biden in 2024.
“Now the Marxist left is once again using the same corrupt DOJ and the same corrupt FBI, and the attorney general and the local district attorneys to interfere in our elections at a level that our country, and few countries have ever seen before. They’re cheating, they’re crooked, they’re corrupt,” Trump said in a speech at Georgia’s Republican convention. “These criminals cannot be rewarded, they must be defeated, you have to defeat them, you have to defeat them. Because in the end, they are not coming after me, they‘re coming after you, and I am just standing in their way. Here I am, just standing in their way, and I always will be.”
Trump announced last Thursday that he’d been informed of the indictment released Friday, unveiling 31 counts of alleged violations of the Espionage Act tied with Smith’s documents probe and the August raid on Mar-a-Lago. Trump is charged with 38 counts in total.
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Trump pointed to the documents found in the Penn-Biden Center, the president’s think tank in Washington, D.C., and Biden’s Delaware home from his time as vice president, as well as the classified document found in former Vice President Mike Pence’s home. He slammed Smith for being “deranged” and a “Trump-hater,” and criticized the lack of charges brought against both Pence and Biden.
“November 5, 2024, we will stand up to the corrupt political establishment. We will evict a totally corrupt president, Joe Biden, from the White House. We will finish the job that we started, the most successful president,” Trump said.
“The stakes of this election could not be more stark. Either we have a deep state or we have a democracy, we’re going to have one or the other, and we’re right at the tipping point,” said Trump. “Right now we’re way leaning toward deep state but deep state isn’t strong enough. It’s really a communist country, a marxist country — deep state’s not strong enough. Deep state now is a nice term compared to what we’re doing. Either we have a failed country, or a free and successful country, and either they win or we win, it’s very simple. It is simple, they win or you win.”
“This is a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately, get em’ out,” said Trump.
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