Donald Trump was arrested after he turned himself in Tuesday for a historic New York court hearing held amid tight security.
He surrendered to authorities at Manhattan Criminal Court just before 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, beginning a surreal moment in U.S. history: a former president placed under arrest.
After being fingerprinted, though not photographed for a mug shot, Trump walked a few steps out from behind a blacked-out door, where photographers briefly captured his glowering face framed by his signature combination of navy suit, white shirt, and red tie. Inside the courtroom, the 76-year-old defendant sat with his hands in his lap, next to his defense attorneys.
Trump pleaded not guilty to a host of charges related to hush money paid to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election that brought him to power.
When asked by Judge Juan Merchan how he pleaded to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, Trump answered, “Not guilty.”
The case centers on Trump’s alleged role in directing hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels via Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, to save his 2016 presidential campaign from the porn star’s allegations of an extramarital affair years earlier. Prosecutors allege that business records created to reimburse Cohen were falsified — everything from entries in the Trump Corporation’s ledger to check stubs. In court papers, they also cited similar efforts by Trump’s then-friend David Pecker, who ran the National Enquirer, to “catch and kill” other damaging stories from Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and a former Trump doorman.
Seated behind the prosecution table was Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, taking notes in a spiral-bound notebook and flanked by security. Days earlier, Trump had shared an image of himself wielding a baseball bat against Bragg, who has faced at least once death threat since Trump unleashed a familiar campaign of intimidation against him.
