Trump was booked and fingerprinted before entering the courtroom and offering a soft-spoken “not guilty” to each of the four counts lodged against him on Tuesday by Jack Smith, the special counsel.
He was allowed to leave court without paying any bail or agreeing to any travel restrictions. A first pretrial hearing was set for August 28. Trump arrived in Washington in the remarkable position of being under indictment in three separate cases as he is running for president again. In addition to the election case, he faces federal charges of mishandling classified documents and accusations in New York related to hush money payments to a porn star.
But even as he sped in and out of federal district court in about an hour and a half, he was leading his rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination by wide margins and remained defiant. “This is a very sad day for America,” Trump said at the airport in Washington before boarding his plane back to his golf club in New Jersey. “This is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America.”
Thursday’s hearing was held inside a courthouse that has been the venue for hundreds of trials stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Gujarat-born magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya oversaw the roughly half-hour intake hearing on Thursday. She set the first hearing before the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, for August 28 – the date chosen by Trump’s lawyers from among the three options she provided. Delaying the proceedings as much as possible is expected to be part of Trump’s legal strategy, given that he could effectively call off cases against him if he wins the 2024 election. NYT