Arraigned, Again: Trump’s Federal Court Hearing in Miami

Okay, this is Daily Producer Michael Simon-Johnson. I am in downtown Miami. That's got to be one of the coolest looking courthouses I've seen, for sure. And now I'm trying to find Luke Broadwater. Oh, there he is.

Luke.

Hey.

Good morning. How's it going?

Good. Yeah.

Yeah. How about you? I'm alright.

Oh.

That's an actual rooster just walking around.

There's roosters all over the place.

There's roosters everywhere. This is crazy.

Is this normal?

Where are we and what are we doing?

We're at the federal courthouse here in Miami on a hot June day.

Ridiculously hot.

Ridiculously hot day for the arraignment of Donald J. Trump, the first American president to be arraigned on federal charges in the history of the country. And you know, it's a historic day, but really a sort of a circus-like atmosphere has broken out here outside the courthouse, on the lawn.

USA! USA! USA! USA!

It's really taking on the feel of a Trump rally. I mean, it's, you know, Make America Great Again. hats everywhere. It's Let's Go. Brandon flags.

We want Trump! We want Trump! We want Trump!

We want Trump! There's a white flag and an American flag, and he's holding up, looks like a pike, with a pig's head through it. I think that's a real, yeah, that's a real pig. This guy took a real pig's head, shoved it through a stick, and is, like, standing here talking to people.

There's a lot of anger, but also festivities in the air. It's very much a festive mood.

Yeah, I would say the mood here is jovial, despite what's happening. Let's go, Brandon!

Let's go, Brandon! Let's go, Brandon! Justice for Trump! Justice for Trump!

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bilboro. This is The Daily. Today, three dispatches from the arraignment of Donald Trump on 37 federal charges over his handling of classified documents. Luke Broadwater was outside the courthouse in Miami. Glenn Thrush was inside the courtroom.

Okay, we can, uh, we can do some interviews if you want.

Hi, sir, we're with the New York Times.

You have a few minutes.

Yeah, where?

I'm from Hollywood, California, but I used to be the former official ambassador of Beverly.

Hills.

I flew about five hours, so, I mean, I didn't get much sleep, but I'm, you know.

Can you briefly describe what you're wearing today?

Yeah, it's a tuxedo, red tuxedo, black top hat.

You're wearing a gold chain that says, in Trump we trust. Yes.

Yes.

A top hat that says, we love Trump. And then your sign says Trump DeSantis, 2024..

I'll tell you, you know, because, if anything, if Trump were to get convicted, DeSantis, I think he would win, and he could pardon him.

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

The next people handing out flyers.

The next voice you will hear is that of LaVey Ramaswamy, the presidential candidate for the Republican Party.

On January 20th, 2025, if I'm elected the next U.S. president, to pardon Donald J.

Trump for these offenses in this federal case, and I have challenged, I have demanded, that every other candidate in this race either sign this commitment to pardon on January.

20th, 2025, or else to explain why they are not.

Thank you.

How you doing? Good.

I went to the New York Times.

Well, good to see you. What's your name?

Luke Broadwater.

Yeah, how you doing?

Good, I'm Michael Johnson. Michael, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. What's your name?

I'm Jay. Uh huh. You're going to like my name, Jay Lowe.

Jay Lowe?

Yeah, that's my name. L-O-W-E? Huh? Yeah.

Like Groblo. Do you get that a lot?

Like Groblo, or even like the Jennifer Lopez, except I'm prettier than she is.

Where are you from?

I'm from the Dallas area. Oh, from Dallas.

You came all the way from Dallas for this?

Yeah, yeah. I got to support my guy.

Could you describe what you're wearing? You have a Trump Take America Back 2024 shirt and a similar hat, a red hat.

If I had Trump pants, I'd be wearing those too. Yeah. It's like supporting your favorite football team. Or I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. I wear Red Sox style all the time.

What motivates someone to travel all the way from Dallas?

Well, one is that I love what he did for our country when he was president, and I think he's being treated unfairly, so we're here to support him, let him know there's a whole lot of people that love him. We're standing behind him and praying for him.

And have you read the indictment?

No, I've heard about them, but yeah.

Did you see the picture of the boxes in the bathroom with the classified material?

I saw those, and I saw the ones that were in Biden's garage, you know, behind his car. Yeah, I saw those too. And you hear about all those things, so all of this is being blown way out of proportion. They're just looking for anything and everything. How come?

Well, there's a special counsel investigating that as well, a different one. So we don't know what's going to happen.

Funny how that doesn't go anywhere, isn't it? And how about those 30,000 emails that Hillary had? But you see, here's the point. If they don't want to indict her and they don't want to really investigate Biden, then get off his back. But see, they don't want to.

What the Justice Department would say, I think, is that in some of those cases, there wasn't the intent to obstruct afterwards, but that Trump jerked them around for a year and a half.

Yeah, they say that. What do they say about Hillary erasing 30,000 emails? Oh, well, you know, it doesn't really matter.

He said it was very irresponsible that no one would prosecute him.

Irresponsible, that's a tough word, isn't it?

Well, let me ask you this. Why didn't Trump, who, under the Justice Department, last four years, prosecute Hillary then?

I don't know. Maybe they just don't. I don't know. I have no idea. But there's proof.

So you think they're looking for anything on Trump that they can get?

If he walked across this road and the light was red, they'd get him for JROC.

So the allegation that they have Trump on tape, saying that he has...

Have you heard that tape?

No, I don't think anyone besides them has heard it.

I understand. And I'm not being facetious with you, but I hadn't heard it either.

No, we just heard the transcript in the indictment.

So you're saying until we hear it, we can't know?

Yeah, I don't know. I know this. They were swearing up and down. Adam Schiff, swearing up and down. Oh yeah, all this Russian collusion.

You're saying. this is kind of a familiar story?

To me, it's just one more attack. Then you've got the thing in New York going on. Seriously? The littlest things, and now they're making big things. But you sure didn't make big things out of what Hillary did.

Sir, thanks so much for chatting with us. Yeah, thank you.

Trump arrived somehow discreetly underground somewhere and went into the courthouse.

I wonder how long it'll take for the judge to see him and for the arraignment to take place.

Glenn, once Donald Trump enters the courthouse, we can't really see anything. But you can, because you were in that building. So walk us through what happened and what you were able to see.

Well, sometime around 2 o'clock, maybe a little later, we spotted a motorcade of four SUVs entering sort of an underground garage area at the courthouse. From that point in time, we are told he was taken to a holding area with the U.S. Marshals Service where he was electronically fingerprinted. This is not an ink deal. This is him sort of rolling his hand over an electronic scanner.

And just to remind people, his co-defendant is someone accused of essentially conspiring with him to obstruct the federal government's efforts to find and retrieve these classified documents.

Exactly. His co-defendant is a former White House aide. You would call him his body man. He sort of does everything for the president. And he is accused of helping Trump move around a bunch of boxes before the FBI, before the Justice Department, and even before Trump's own lawyers got a chance to look at that paperwork.

And they are there together in the courtroom?

Together, yes. And lo and behold, about 20 feet away from Trump, on the other side of the courtroom, sat Jack Smith, the special counsel.

Interesting.

So Trump is kind of talking with his lawyers. There's even a couple of jokes exchanged. But then the atmosphere changes abruptly. at 2.45 p.m. A court worker shouts out, the camera in this courtroom has been activated so that all the press who are downstairs on the fifth floor can see everything.

And what's the expression on Trump's face?

I didn't see his face, but I saw his back. Trump had his arms crossed, and he was so tense, you could see sort of the muscles pushing through the back of his blue suit jacket. He was not a comfortable guy. And then the judge enters the courtroom, and it's not the one most people would have expected to see. That's Aileen Cannon, who is a Trump appointee who had previously issued some very pro-Trump rulings.

What else does this judge say to Trump?

The only real sticking point in this hearing was this question of whether or not Trump can still communicate with Walt Nowda, who still works for him and is on his payroll, and other potential witnesses in his security detail and his political operation on his personal staff. And it really gets to the core of the entire case, that the people around Trump are also perhaps the most important witnesses in this case. And a lot of them are still around him. So how do you negotiate that? How do you allow somebody to remain on your security detail or continue to work on your political campaign when they could be a potential witness?

In other words, if I'm cutting right to the core of this, Glenn, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's a fear that Trump is going to pressure his body man, who is now his co-conspirator, into giving testimony that would be favorable to Trump, something that would be made significantly easier by the fact that Trump works with this guy day in, day out.

Yeah, it's just a tangled mess. Whether or not Trump gets to be in communication with these folks, what the nature of the communications, what restrictions on those communications are going to be, there was about 15 minutes of sparring on that. And there was a resolution of sorts, which was basically Walt Nowda can't talk to Trump about the case. He could talk to Trump about everything else, but how do you really enforce that?

Okay, so how does this arraignment ultimately come to an end?

Well, that's what's most fascinating. Jack Smith is sitting 20 feet away from Donald Trump, and they both have to exit the courtroom. Trump leaves first through a side door on my right, and then a minute later, almost choreographed, Smith gets up, walks through the gate, and exits on precisely the opposite side of the courtroom. It was probably just the way that things played out, but it really looked like both of them didn't really want to have to bump into each other.

Well, Glenn, thank you very much.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

Hey, everyone. It's Estette Herndon, political reporter for The New York Times. When I became a journalist, I made a promise to my readers, like the way that doctors take an oath to their patients. I committed to bringing the truth to light, no matter which party, business, organization, or person I'm reporting on. I have to be persistent.

Hello?

Hey, Maggie.

Hi, Michael.

Hi. Hi, hi, hi. Can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Okay, so this is what cell phone quality sounds like.

I am sitting underneath a table out on the patio at Bedminster, where reporters are going to be sitting out here for the next six hours or so, waiting for Trump to come speak after his arraignment. We have no sun cover, and there is no Wi-Fi that they're making available to us, so this is how you and I are speaking. Got it. So, as I said, I am speaking to you from under a table where someone just kicked me in the back, and, you know, there was someone under the table.

I mean, the things you do for us, Maggie.

I am a devoted member of the New York Times team. There you go.

Okay, so to the matter at hand, Maggie, now that Trump has been arraigned and has entered a plea of not guilty in this federal indictment, we're turning to you from Bedminster, from under this table, to understand what his defense is going to look like, his legal defense for the courtroom and his defense in the court of public opinion. So let's start, Maggie, with what you have come to understand his legal defense might look like.

Sure. So, Michael, the legal strategy is by far the biggest challenge for Trump in this case, both because of the severity of the charges, the potential for jail time, and because the indictment contains so much evidence that the government says lay out Trump's criminal behavior when it comes to these classified documents and to obstruction of their investigation. Mm-hmm. So, at a 30,000-foot level, Michael, their plan is to try to slow this process down and to toss sand in the gears of the legal process.

Mm-hmm. And what does sand in the gears look like in the case of a federal indictment of this scale?

Well, the emerging sense is it's going to look like a couple of different things, and they haven't said specifically what it'll be. But we anticipate, just based on their public comments, that Trump's lawyers are going to use the legal system to argue that the prosecutors in the special counsel Jack Smith's office, who brought this indictment against Trump, did something wrong, that they committed prosecutorial misconduct along the way.

Okay, and what might prosecutorial misconduct be when it comes to the special counsel's office? I mean, just help us understand what that might look like.

Sure. So one thing that we know is that there have been sealed motions filed, or a sealed motion filed to try to obtain transcripts from the grand jury proceeding. The idea is basically that Trump's lawyers would pour over these transcripts, looking for things that they could object to that could show bias or misconduct or inappropriate behavior with the grand jury. Mm. And we know one thing that they might be looking for is to suggest that prosecutors did not behave appropriately when they were dealing with interviews.

And Trump's legal team might be suggesting that because we now know from the indictment that some of Trump's lawyers, and this is quite unusual, were compelled to provide testimony against Trump by the special counsel and that some of that testimony was very powerful in convincing prosecutors to bring these charges against Trump.

So, yes, a couple of them testified, but one in particular was a very significant witness, and that was Evan Corcoran. Now, Corcoran had copious notes, including at least two that he took on audio files, and then there were transcripts of them. Right. And those served as something of a roadmap for prosecutors who were investigating this. Now, Corcoran was compelled to testify by a judge.

Got it. And do we know what specific argument they're likely to use as to why this lawyer's notes and anything else he said shouldn't be used in this trial?

They're going to, I suspect, make the same argument that they made before the judge who ordered them turned over in the first place, which is that there is no legitimate reason to pierce the attorney-client privilege and that this was a bridge too far. Now, a lot of this is going to depend on how well-reasoned that judge's decision in saying that they had to be turned over in the first place, but we will find out.

Right. And we've talked about this with some of our colleagues, Mike Schmidt, Ben Protest. The reason why the government was able to pierce the attorney-client privilege was because they believe there's evidence that Trump, the client, committed a crime and therefore the lawyer's traditional privileged conversation with the client loses that privilege. That's the thinking. So they would need a very strong argument that that's not true.

Yes, that's correct.

Maggie, do we know there to be any other pieces of evidence that the Trump legal team is targeting and seeking to basically knock out of this case, get tossed out?

That's what we know of right now. There's not a ton of other evidence we know of that they're going to point to as inadmissible. We do know they're trying to argue that there is political bias in the background of at least one of the prosecutors involved.

In other words, a conflict of interest that might make the prosecutor ineligible or wrong for the case. They might try to take that up. Could that possibly result in the entire indictment in some way being tossed out?

Well, that's what they're going to try. It's a high bar to get the indictment tossed out, but I suspect you will see all kinds of efforts along those lines.

Well, to that point, let's assume at some point this does go to a trial, right? And that these efforts to slow the process, get things thrown out, only go so far. Then Trump needs a legal argument for why what he did was not a crime. What do we think that legal argument might be?

For that, Michael, we do have a feel for so far, because of things he's said and his lawyers have said. He's argued, and I think he and they will keep arguing, that he was allowed to take these documents from the White House under something called the Presidential Records Act, which governs the ownership of presidential records.

And what does that act actually say?

So that act, here's what it says. Here's what Trump says. it says. In Trump's telling, under this law, Trump has a few years to go through all these papers to figure out what he can keep and what he has to return to the National Archives. The law does not say that.

So he's arguing there's some window of time that he still says he's in, in which he can rifle through papers and decide what's his and what's the government's, and the law you're saying doesn't really say that, but that's his interpretation of it?

Yes, that's what he's saying. his interpretation is, Michael, and I think that's going to be a pretty hard thing for him to argue in court. His defense. so far, Michael, is basically court of public opinion, as opposed to things that will stand up in a court case. Now, we will see what happens when he has a legal team assembled, but right now, these are not strong arguments against these charges.

So, Maggie, you have nicely teed up Trump's approach to defending himself in the court of public opinion rather than just the courtroom, and we started to get a look at that over the past few days, but you have been talking to those around Trump about what exactly is at the heart of his public relations strategy. So walk us through that.

Sure. So, so much of this feels familiar, Michael, and it's gone back several years now. You play the victim, you blame the deep state, or you blame Democrats. Right. Punish Republicans who stray for disloyalty, but the fact that this is the second indictment of Trump and that it's a federal indictment from Joe Biden's Department of Justice changes the dynamic.

And how does it change that familiar dynamic you just described?

So he and his allies see this indictment as a chance to end the primary race before it has even begun. They see this as a chance to squeeze his main rival, Ron DeSantis, in the Republican primary, from one side to try to end that race before it has even begun in the minds of Republican voters by describing this as him, Donald Trump, in an active battle with President Biden.

Okay, explain how that's going to work and explain how that's going to help him with his legal woes.

Sure. So the way they're framing it and the way they hope voters will see it is that the Biden administration is indicting Trump because it most fears Trump and because he's the guy to beat in 2024, and because he is the leader of this movement. They're going to say that Biden went after his chief opponent, that Biden weaponized the Justice Department and turned them to go after the person leading the Republican primary poll, that this is the only way to take on Donald Trump is to take him out legally. The Biden White House has strenuously denied that, has said that this is an independent Department of Justice, but Donald Trump is going to capitalize on the fact that his supporters do not believe that.

Got it. So the way Trump and his allies see this indictment is as allowing them to more, naturally, more easily, more convincingly portray the Republican primary as kind of like not a big deal, not really even a thing, because ultimately it's Trump versus Biden, and Biden has made it so by allowing his Justice Department to indict Trump.

That's exactly right. And I anticipate that it will swing back toward attacking other Republicans months down the road. But for now, it really is about a head-to-head with Biden and Trump.

Maggie, I'm curious what Trump's opponents make of the way he's seeing this moment as one where he now zooms ahead and sort of doesn't really need to participate in a primary.

Well, they're not enjoying it. Obviously, people who are running for president in the Republican primary don't want to be seen as also-rans under any circumstance, and they certainly don't want to be told the race is over just as it's really beginning. And they are stymied as to how to handle it, Michael. You've seen non-dissenters tread kind of cautiously towards suggesting Trump maybe did something wrong, but also suggesting that there is selective prosecution. You have really only seen a very slight shift from Tim Scott and Nikki Haley towards suggesting that Donald Trump did something that was inappropriate, or at least that the charges are serious.

Maggie, it's really interesting. We actually saw another version of this, Trump narrating, kind of setting the terms of all this, play out actually in front of the courthouse, where he pleaded not guilty when another one of his rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, held a news conference and he said that if he wins the nomination, he's going to pardon Donald Trump. That's going to be one of the first things he does. And he challenged the entire rest of the Republican primary field to make the same commitment, to promise to pardon Trump. I have two questions for you.

I definitely think there's going to be pressure on candidates to say, Michael, whether they will pardon Trump. And I think that could get very uncomfortable, particularly on a debate stage, if everybody is together. He definitely understands that other Republicans who want to become president need his support and need him to not try to undermine them should they beat him. And that provides him some level of comfort that it might be in somebody's interest, who's a Republican who becomes president, to pardon.

I think I want to translate that, because it's fascinating, the idea you're raising. Trump might lose the Republican primary, and yet the winner of the primary, let's say it's Ron DeSantis, let's say it's Chris Christie, they would go to Donald Trump and say, please endorse me. And I think we have to imagine, both of us knowing Donald Trump, that he would say something like, sure, I will endorse you if you promise to pardon me.

I could see him not just intimating that but saying it, and I think that any Republican candidate who either had won the nomination or was close to it would feel compelled to at least seem to Trump that they were humoring this idea. Whether they would follow through is anybody's guess, but I think that candidates have a habit of saying something to win a primary that they may not necessarily do once it happens.

Well, Maggie, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Michael, thanks for having me.

Bye, Maggie.

Today we witness the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country.

On Tuesday night, in a speech from Bedminster, Trump called his arraignment a day that would live in infamy, and assailed President Biden for, in Trump's telling, allowing it to happen.

Very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges, of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a presidential election in which he is losing very badly.

But Trump told the crowd that the charges against him would only make him stronger as a candidate for president.

But they will fail and we will win bigger and better.

than ever before.

Meanwhile, the calls from Trump's Republican rivals to pardon him only grew. After Trump's arraignment, another candidate in the Republican race, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, said that, if elected, she too favored pardoning the former president.