Former United States president, Donald Trump, has entered a not guilty plea to charges that he lied and schemed to hold on to sensitive national security material that he was supposed to have surrendered when he left the White House.
Trump, 76, was indicted last week on 37 federal felony counts, including willful retention of national defense information, making false statements and representations, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
In court, Trump who was clad in a blue suit and red tie sat silently with his hands crossed while the not guilty plea was being entered by his attorney during the brief proceeding before Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman.
“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump lawyer, Todd Blanche, told the judge.
According to BBC News, Special counsel Jack Smith, whose office brought the case, was in court for the proceeding, seated in the front row.
Goodman did not put any travel restrictions on Trump, who’s campaigning for president, or ask him to surrender his passport.
Prosecutors had not asked for either restriction, even as the judge did on his own bar Trump from discussing the case with any witnesses identified on a list to be compiled by government lawyers.
Trump was seated at the same table as his co-defendant in the case, aide Walt Nauta.
Nauta, 40, did not enter a plea because he does not yet have a local attorney, and was given a June 27 return date.
The bombshell case is the first time in U.S. history that a former president has been charged with federal crimes — a test of the criminal justice system he once presided over in a politically fraught prosecution.
Trump was arraigned once before in the New York case involving his hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
But unlike the Manhattan court, the federal magistrate in Miami prohibited cameras inside the building, leaving the public to watch only the small gathering of supporters outside.
Trump left the courthouse just before 4pm ET, and stopped at the popular Cuban restaurant Versailles, where the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to him. Trump turns 77 on Wednesday.
“Thank you Miami. Such a warm welcome on such a SAD DAY for our Country!” Trump posted on Truth Social as he was headed toward the airport.
The former president, who had struggled to find a local attorney after two members of his legal team resigned Friday, was represented in his initial appearance by Blanche and Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general and an ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main 2024 GOP rival, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation.
Trump arrived to the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse in Miami on June 13, 2023.
Both travelled with Trump to the courthouse in his motorcade, a source close to Trump said.
Trump who denied any wrongdoing, maintaining that he was entitled to the documents, said the prosecution was politically motivated and vowed to retaliate against President Joe Biden if re-elected.
“Now that the ‘seal’ is broken,” Trump wrote in all capital letters in a post on Truth Social earlier in the day, ” … I will appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden.”
Alina Habba, a Trump attorney who is involved with his other cases, spoke to reporters outside of the courthouse and repeated the former president’s claims that politics was driving the prosecution.
He said Trump is the Republican front-runner and it’s “less than a year and half before the election.”
“People in charge of this country do not love America. They hate Donald Trump,” Habba said.
Trump did not make any public comments at the courthouse, and was scheduled to deliver remarks at his estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday night. The event had originally been planned as a private fundraiser for his 77th birthday.
There was no mug shot of Trump during the booking process, a law enforcement source told NBC News, with an existing photo uploaded to the government’s secure booking database, which is not publicly accessible.
He was also going to be electronically fingerprinted.
