Fact check: Judge in hush money case
Trump called justice Juan Merchan a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris”.
Merchan’s daughter is president of Authentic, an agency that has worked with the campaigns of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris , Cory Booker and other Democrats. But that is not a conflict of interest for the justice, or grounds for a recusal by judicial ethics standards.
Fact check: Classified documents
During the speech, Trump also claimed that the Presidential Records Act involves a negotiation with the National Archives and Records Administration over documents, which is false. In fact, Nara gets custody of presidential documents the moment he leaves office.
Trump was joined tonight by his children Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany, as well as supporters including Roger Stone, Mike Lindell, far-right representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Missing tonight were Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka Trump, who has distanced herself from her father after working for his administration, and Melania Trump.
CNN cut away from its live coverage of Trump’s speech as the former president continued to rail against the charges against him.
Meanwhile, MSNBC opted not to broadcast Trump’s remarks at all. Instead, host Rachel Maddow said the outlet would monitor his remarks for any news rather than cover them in full.
“This is basically a campaign speech in which he is repeating his same lies and allegations against his perceived enemies,” Maddow said. “He’s just giving his normal list of grievances. We don’t consider that necessarily newsworthy and there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”
NPR also did not air Trump’s speech live.
Donald Trump has repeatedly misconstrued the investigation into his possession of classified documents, comparing what he did to what his predecessors did.
Trump took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, whereas former president Barack Obama turned over documents, according to the National Archives and Records Administration itself. In the cases of other former presidents, the Nara moved documents out of DC to other facilities.
After listing off a number of grievances, attacking those involved in the multiple investigations and criminal cases against him, and rambling a number of of-repeated falsehoods about the 2020 elections, he walked off stage.
The speech was in many ways a standard performance, but shorter.
Fact-check: Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell’
Donald Trump began his remarks at Mar-a-Lago by quickly bringing up “Hunter Biden‘s laptop from hell, which the former president falsely claimed exposes the Biden family as “criminals”.
Conservatives have latched on to the story about the laptop since it was reportedly left by Hunter in a computer repair shop in 2020, and argue it contains data somehow proving corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his relatives. Data on the laptop, which analysts and news media examined extensively, showed that Hunter tried to use his family name to his advantage, but did not show corruption on the part of Joe Biden.
He attacked Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, and his family, bringing up Bragg’s wife’s tweets. He also attacked the judge assigned to the case, calling him a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family”.
Trump did not, however, deny paying Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal hush money to cover up an extramarital affair.
So far, this has been a version of the classic Trump stump speech – rambling, repetitive, and bereft of fact.
The ex-president has started off by listing a number of unrelated political grievances, referring back to his first impeachment and issues with social media companies, and lobbed accusations against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
He reiterated antisemitic rhetoric to discredit the Manhattan district attorney, denied the charges, then launched into a rambling, heavily embellished rant on the unrelated investigation into the top-secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago, then started on the civil fraud suit brought by the New York state attorney general.
The speech blurs distinctions between the investigations and court battles he is facing ahead, lumping them all into a singular enemy.
Trump walked on as Proud to be an American played. The former president will be making his first public remarks since getting charged with crimes.
The atmosphere in the room is that of a classic Trump political rally.
He hosted The Apprentice. He played The President. Now, at the age of 76, came the role that Donald Trump had spent his life avoiding: The Defendant.
On Tuesday, a single photograph showed Trump sitting in a prosaic New York courtroom with two lawyers to his left and two more to his right. Behind him were two uniformed police officers wearing handcuffs on their belts. One had a police radio on his shoulder, the other a Covid-protective mask over her face.
Two grey, ordinary notice boards adorned the plain wood wall. A small Stars and Stripes was pinned to one at an oblique angle. But perhaps most striking about the image was that, while everyone else was engaged in the moment, Trump stared back at the camera with an ambiguous expression.
For his millions of critics in blue America, this was the face of a criminal defendant at his moment of reckoning. It was the final fall for a man who used to walk with kings, command the world’s most powerful military and casually threaten political opponents such as Hillary Clinton with jail.
But his millions of fans in red America will have seen something else. America’s faith in law enforcement is matched only by its romance with glamorous criminals such as Bonnie and Clyde or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This was the day of The Outlaw Donald Trump.
Its neat symbol came in the form of a characteristically fake image. About half an hour before Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over a hush money payments to two women, his campaign sent out a fundraising email selling T-shirts with a mocked-up mugshot of Trump and the legend: “Not guilty.” (In reality, no mugshot was taken.)
It was a typically audacious move that said everything about how, while this was a hideous day for Trump legally, it was seen by many as a victorious day for him politically and financially.
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Trump has landed in Florida.
He was greeted by supporters including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow owner and prominent disseminator of election misinformation.
Many of the ex-president’s greeters were dressed in American flag colors and some were holding Trump 2024 signs.
At Mar-A-Lago, where Trump is expected to speak soon, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was among the well-known followers awaiting him.
Hugo Lowell in New York and Lauren Gambino in Washington report:
In a 13-page statement of facts, the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused Trump of having “orchestrated a scheme” with the intent “to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant’s electoral prospects”.
The charges, according to the felony indictment unsealed on Tuesday, stem from payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, as well as hush money deals made with Playboy model Karen McDougal, who wanted to sell her story of an affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 election, and a former Trump Tower doorman, who claimed Trump had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Trump has denied the sexual encounters and any wrongdoing, casting himself as the victim of a political “witch-hunt”.
“We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law,” Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said at his press conference after Trump’s arraignment. “No amount of money, no amount of power changes that enduring American principle.”
Facing scrutiny over his decision to pursue the case, Bragg forcefully defended the case. He argued that falsifying business records was the “bread and butter” of his office’s white-collar investigations and that “true and accurate business records” were all the more important in Manhattan, which he called the “financial capital of the world”.
According to prosecutors, Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump’s then lawyer Michael Cohen to buy her silence in the final days of the presidential campaign. Cohen said the payments were made at the direction of Trump, who reimbursed him while serving as president. Those payments, distributed to Cohen through Trump’s company, were falsely classified as legal expenses, prosecutors say.
In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal crimes involving the hush money payment and was sentenced to three years in prison, which Trump’s legal team has used to undermine his credibility.
Separately, prosecutors say, the parent company of the National Enquirer, American Media Inc, arranged two “catch and kill” deals to squash stories that could potentially damage Trump’s electoral prospects. One involved a $30,000 payoff to the former Trump Tower doorman. The tabloid reached a $150,000 agreement with McDougal, purchasing the rights to her story in an effort to keep it from going public.
The prosecutors doubled down on the timing of Trump’s actions, which they said could have undermined his campaign during the 2016 election. And they asked for protective orders for discovery materials, including Trump’s escalatory posts on his platform Truth Social, such as when he vowed “death and destruction” in the event he was indicted.
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In New York, Trump got an underwhelming show of support.
Hundreds of pro- and anti-Trump protesters had gathered outside the Manhattan criminal court, and the crowds were expected to go wild as the former president arrived and was taken into the custody.
But in the event, few knew Donald Trump had arrived until he was already in the building and under arrest.
It made for a slightly underwhelming scene as the two opposing crowds – separated by metal barriers – were filled with whispers, rather than chants.
Snippets of information were passed from person to person at about 1.30pm. A Trump-supporting woman reported that her boss’s friend, who manages a restaurant in New Jersey, believed the ex-president had arrived and was in court.
But another woman had a CNN live stream on her phone which showed Trump’s car was still en route to the court. It turned out the screen had frozen, however, and eventually a general consensus emerged: Trump was in court, and had been arraigned on more than 30 charges relating to hush money payments to an adult film star.
The anti-Trump protesters, many of whom had had been dancing, singing and chanting since about 9.30am that morning, let out a loud cheer. Someone had been giving out whistles, and they were blown in jubilation.
“Lock him up!” – a play on the chant that Trump supporters aimed at Hillary Clinton through the 2016 election and beyond – could be heard around Collect Pond Park, a former open sewer where the public had been contained by police.
On the Trump side of the barricade, the mood was quiet. No one wailed, no one fell to their knees, there was just a low murmur as mumbles and expletives were uttered from underneath a sea of red Maga hats.
They had been more animated in the morning, although the centerpiece of the protest – an appearance by Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-dabbling, hard-right Republican conspiracy theorist – had descended into farce almost immediately.
Some anti-Trumpers had infiltrated the Trump side, and launched a highly successful attempt to silence the Georgia congresswoman. Greene, escorted by security, was armed with a megaphone, but she could be barely be heard above the sound of whistling and shouting. From about 10 yards away it was possible to make out the words “Alvin Bragg”, the name of the Manhattan district attorney who has brought the case against Trump, but the rest was just noise.
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Donald Trump is expected to make his first public remarks after his arraignment earlier today in New York this evening from his home in Florida.
This is the first time in US history that a former president has been charged with a crime. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records and conspiracy.
After entering his plea, Trump posted on his Truth Social account that there was “no case” against him, and “there was nothing done illegally”. He is expected to reiterate that message in his speech tonight.
Already, Trump has used his arraignment as an opportunity to rile up supporters and raise funds, calling on followers to “PROTEST” his arrest and launching threatening, racist attacks against Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is overseeing the case.
Bragg has charged Trump with crimes primarily connected to a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. But Bragg’s prosecutors have also accused Trump of undermining the integrity of the 2016 elections by orchestrating a scheme to purchase and suppress negative stories.
The former president’s journey to and from New York to face the charges and enter his plea has been closely tracked by a media circus, which the president has played into.
Although Trump was fingerprinted while in custody, like any other defendant, he was not handcuffed, nor did he have his mugshot taken. Still, his campaign team is selling $36 T-shirts with a fake booking photo (one that embellishes his height by two inches and his face with a soft-focus halo).
The Guardian will be monitoring and fact-checking Trump’s speech here on the liveblog.
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