A somber Donald Trump spent 42 minutes in a crowded D.C. courtroom Thursday afternoon, being arraigned on charges related to efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the run-up to the failed coup d’etat at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As of 4:25 p.m. EDT today, Trump has formally denied any guilt in the four federal conspiracy charges against him for his attempted coup after losing the 2020 election.
Reporters were ushered into the second-floor courtroom about an hour and a half before the arraignment began but law enforcement officers required all electronics be turned off before entering the room, cutting the journalists off from the outside world.
As the wait began for Trump’s arrival from New Jersey, the four-row public gallery in the back of the courtroom and the jury box filled up with law clerks, court staff, sketch artists and even a few members of the public.
Seated on the opposite side of the courtroom in the back row were multiple federal judges who serve on the court. They included Chief District Judge James Boasberg, District Judge Amy Berman Jackson and District Judge Randy Moss. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been assigned to oversee the case, did not attend. Those judges have all presided over Jan. 6 cases previously, and their appearance Thursday was an unusual occurrence.
Multiple family members of Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, who presided over Trump’s arraignment, were also seated in the gallery.
Special counsel Jack Smith walked in at about 3:45 p.m. He sat just in front of the gallery, behind the prosecution table. Eleven prosecutors and FBI agents are seated in front of the bar, prosecutors Thomas Windom and Molly Gaston at the table.
Trump, wearing his signature red tie, entered about five minutes later from a separate door and walked to his seat with his lawyers, Todd Blanche and John Lauro.
Before sitting down, Trump acknowledged one of his other attorneys, Evan Corcoran, who was already seated in the room and previously represented the former president in another federal case centered on classified documents.
Nearly a dozen federal agents stood behind the former president as he and his attorneys waited for the judge for 24 minutes. In all, roughly 100 people were in the room.
Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya entered the courtroom at 4:14 p.m. and everyone in the room rises, then sits. The clerk calls criminal case “23 dash 257, the United States of America versus Donald J. Trump.”
Trump and the judge exchange “Good afternoon,” greetings before the clerk swears in the defendant and the judge begins asking him some standard questions.
To be clear, the former president is fully entitled to the same rights and protections as other criminal defendants. He deserves a fair trial and must be presumed innocent until proven guilty despite his own history of denying others that presumption.
That said, we all saw and heard the mountains of evidence presented by the congressional January 6 Committee last summer.
We also all watched in horror — in real-time, on live TV — the unprecedented attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was preceded by Trump’s fiery speech telling the angry mob —which he deluded over a period of weeks with lies about election improprieties— to march and ont Capitol and fight for their country.
And we all witnessed Trump’s silence and inaction for hours as the violence that day escalated when he should have ordered law enforcement authorities or National Guards to secure the Capitol.
There is no First Amendment right to carry out an illegal conspiracy to overturn an election.
It would be ridiculous to accept that Trump really believed he won the election after he was informed that his claims of election irregularities were false by two attorneys general, the nation’s top election security official, his vice president, senior White House lawyers, his top campaign aides, and key Republican officials in swing states — all of whom wanted Trump to win,
Arguments that Trump was just exercising his First Amendment rights do not seem like winning defenses.
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