For the first time in history, a former U.S. president has appeared in court as a criminal defendant — and it left President Joe Biden laughing with glee.
Donald Trump surrendered to authorities Tuesday after being indicted by a New York grand jury on charges related to hush money payments at the height of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump, a 2024 presidential candidate, pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges in a Manhattan courtroom. He then flew home to Florida and spoke to a crowd of supporters at his home.
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“Is the indictment of your predecessor politically divisive?” a reporter asked Biden after Trump was arraigned.
Biden didn’t respond.
Instead, he just laughed. Take a look —
"Is the indictment of your predecessor politically divisive?"
BIDEN: *laughs* pic.twitter.com/YGDdBxE0iW
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 4, 2023
After being arrested and released, Trump immediately returned to his home in Florida.
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Appearing in front of several hundred supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate Tuesday night, Trump repeated his claims that the investigation was politically motivated. He and attacked Bragg and the judge in the New York case, the judge’s family and other prosecutors investigating him in other cases.
“The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” Trump said.
Experts said the indictment raises many thorny issues about state and federal law that could provide openings for the defense to attack the charges to try to get them tossed before the case even gets to trial.
“The bottom line is that it’s murky,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school told The Associated Press. “And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time.”
The 34 counts of falsifying business records would normally be misdemeanors, lower-level charges that would not normally result in prison time.
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But they were bumped up to felonies — which carry up to four years behind bars — because, Bragg claimed, they were done in an effort to commit or conceal other crimes.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article