NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. President Donald Trump was arraigned on Tuesday at a court in Manhattan, New York City, formally becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges.
Trump was charged in a New York State Supreme Court indictment with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Under arrest and in police custody, he personally entered the "not guilty" plea.
The historic indictment is thrusting a politically divided United States into uncharted waters and breeding new uncertainty as the 2024 election cycle kicked off.
HISTORIC INDICTMENT
It was the first time a former U.S. president has been criminally charged. "We are watching a scene we have never seen before in American history," Michael Beschloss, an American historian specializing in the United States presidency, tweeted on Tuesday.
"Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal crimes that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
Trump and others, according to Bragg's office, employed a "catch and kill" scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects.
The indictment, which cited three instances of hush-money payments to cover up Trump's alleged affairs, also accuses him of causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.
There was a heavy presence of law enforcement outside the Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday. At a square nearby, Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters were separated by metal barriers while shouting at each other.
On his way back to Mar-a-Lago residence in West Palm Beach, Florida, for a slated speech on Tuesday night, Trump wrote on his social media platform "Truth Social" that "There was nothing done illegally!"
A Republican who held the White House from early 2017 to early 2021 after winning the 2016 race, Trump has denied wrongdoing in the hush money case and charged that the criminal inquiry led by Bragg is politically motivated.
Minutes after the indictment was announced last week, Trump released a lengthy statement calling it part of a "witch hunt." He has repeatedly assailed Bragg and egged on supporters to protest in the past weeks.
Prior to his arraignment on Tuesday, Trump's campaign released a fundraising request to his fans titled "My last email before arrest," lamenting the "lose of justice in America."
Meanwhile, protesters rallied outside Trump Tower ahead of the arraignment. Protests were peaceful, but New York authorities have spent weeks gearing up for potential violence after Trump called for protests last month. New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Monday urged protesters to be on their "best behavior" and control themselves.
Trump's attorney Todd Blanche, speaking to reporters outside the Manhattan Criminal Court after Trump's departure on Tuesday, revealed that his client is "frustrated" and "upset." Trump's legal team has said that they will fight to get the charges dropped.
President Joe Biden and the White House have carefully avoided questions about Trump's arrest and arraignment. He told reporters on Monday that he is confident that New York City police can handle any unrest revolving around the former president's arraignment.
Trump's attorneys have until Aug. 8 to file any motions, and the prosecution will respond by Sept. 19. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan will rule on the motions at the next in-person hearing scheduled for Dec. 4.
GROWING PARTISAN DIVIDE
Republicans have rallied behind Trump, criticizing that the justice system has been weaponized by the Democratic Party for political purposes since Trump, 76, is running for the White House for the third time.
In a statement, U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican critical of Trump, who also addressed Trump's indictment, said "the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda."
Romney said that though he believes Trump's character and conduct "make him unfit for office," Bragg's "overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public's faith in our justice system."
Democrats, by contrast, are seeking to cast the historic indictment as an accountability move and urging Trump supporters to remain peaceful while protesting.
"I believe that Donald Trump will have a fair trial that follows the facts and the law," U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
"There's no place in our justice system for any outside influence or intimidation in the legal process," said Schumer, a New York Democrat.
The unprecedented indictment of the former president came as yet another clear reminder of how U.S. politicians get lost in divisive partisan politics, leaving America's body politic increasingly dysfunctional.
Mired in veto politics of "no for no's sake," Capitol Hill elites have neither the will nor the ability to solve the conundrums fundamentally sapping the American power.
A Pew Research Center survey in October 2021 has found that the United States was regarded as the most politically polarized country, as 90 percent of the American respondents said there were at least strong conflicts between those who support different parties. Now many believe that the divide is only growing wider, not narrower.
Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group listed "Divided States of America" as one of the top risks for 2023 in a recent report, saying the United States "remains one of the most politically polarized and dysfunctional of the world's advanced industrial democracies."
"Trump's criminal indictment unleashes a bitter new phase in American politics," wrote Stephen Collinson, a reporter for CNN Politics covering the White House, in an analysis, adding that it "creates a uniquely perilous moment for a polarized republic already repeatedly driven to the brink."
UNCERTAINTY AHEAD
In addition to the hush-money payment case, Trump is facing several other criminal investigations at the state and federal levels, including his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, his handling of classified documents, and his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Meanwhile, the former U.S. president was believed to be seeking to "case the indictment as a political asset, claiming that the charges would backfire massively on both President Biden and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney," Max Greenwood, a national politics reporter with The Hill, wrote in an analysis.
Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of Trump, according to a new CNN poll released Monday.
Support for the indictment fell along party lines, with 94 percent of Democrats approving of the decision to indict Trump, while 79 percent of Republicans disapproved of the move to indict.
Besides, about three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the Trump indictment, with 52 percent saying it played a major role, the CNN poll showed.
According to other polls, Trump is an early frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, with a significant lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other GOP figures.
American political scientists agreed that the indictment of Trump could help him solidify support within his base and the Republican Party, but warned the criminal case could possibly haunt him in the long term.
"This has helped him in the nominating process," Larry Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "We'll see how it plays. You never know how these things go."
Asked by an ABC News anchor the past weekend how Trump's indictment affects the 2024 presidential race, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who recently joined the 2024 Republican field, said the development "adds to the unpredictability" of the political process.
Biden, who is struggling with poll numbers, has not officially announced his bid to seek reelection yet. U.S. media outlets, quoting people close to the process, said that the president is expected to formally launch his campaign by early summer.
Since the news of Trump's indictment by a Manhattan grand jury came to the public knowledge last week, Biden has sought to distance himself from it to avoid making remarks that Republicans could use to reinforce their allegations of a politically biased justice system. ■
