4 Takeaways After Trump’s DC Arrest and Arraignment

Outside the courthouse, Donald Trump has built his brand around complaints over everything in the legal process: prosecutors, judges, and jurors, casting them all as politically-motivated operatives. 

But when he entered a federal courtroom Thursday, the former president was all business.

Facing four felony charges that could alone send him to prison for the rest of his life, Trump remained polite, addressing the judge as “your honor" and helpfully pointing out that his middle initial “J.” stands for “John" and his age is “seven-seven.”

His brief arraignment not far from the White House and U.S. Capitol ended with a not-guilty plea and an Aug. 28 return date in front of the judge who will preside over his historic case that for the first time ever entails alleged federal felony crimes committed by a sitting president. Ahead are still-emerging fault lines, plus many future legal and public relations battles. 

Here are four top-line takeaways from Trump's brief visit to the nation's capitol on Thursday:

All about the timing

Trump’s lead attorney John Lauro surprised nobody paying attention when he signaled during Thursday's arraignment that he would want to pause the speedy trial clock — a law that sets time limits for all federal cases — at every turn. He said he expected the evidence the special counsel intended to turn over to be massive. 

“I know the government is going to give us a massive amount of information quickly,” Lauro noted.

Federal prosecutor Thomas Windom signaled plans to oppose any attempts to drag out the proceedings. 

"The government intends to put its position in writing, but this case, like every case, will benefit from normal order, including a speedy trial," he responded. 

This early controversy came as no surprise for those closely observing Trump’s legal team, whether in press interviews, cable TV rounds, and other criminal court cases, angling to push as many criminal trials as they can until after the 2024 election. 

So far, that’s not happening. 

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, recently disappointed the 45th president’s legal team by setting a trial date in his classified documents case for May 2024, several months before the election. That is currently slated to be preceded in March by Trump’s criminal trial in New York for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. 

Time will tell whether the third trial will follow suit or potentially get slotted in somewhere else. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, raised the idea over the weekend he would be open to surrendering his trial start date if Smith wants to try to call dibs. An Aug. 28 hearing before Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to include a discussion about the trial date and potentially even an initial schedule.  

Contact with witnesses

Beyond a short debate over the trial schedule, Trump’s brief arraignment proceeded in the usual, clerical fashion. U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya recited the charges and their maximum penalties, informed of his rights, and prompted him to enter his plea. 

“Not guilty,” Trump said, standing up and in a low voice. 

Another routine part of the arraignment process that could prove to be a sticking point is a condition of release forbidding him from contacting other witnesses about the facts of the case outside of the presence of his attorneys. That’s a routine pre-trial condition for criminal defendants, but it’s a potential minefield for Trump, who has a well-known pattern of attacking those he suspects of turning against him. 

“The issue for the magistrate judge is whether there are any effective deterrents for Trump discussing the case with witnesses,” former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner told The Messenger. 

The former president routinely uses social media and stump speeches to attack prosecutors, judges, witnesses, and jurors, and in civil litigation, he’s been sanctioned and held in contempt of court for filing lawsuits found to be frivolous and engaging in discovery violations. 

In Florida, Trump has been charged with obstructing justice and accused of trying to delete critical evidence, in the form of surveillance footage. 

If Trump flouts such an order, a federal judge has to grapple with how to maintain order in her court in an election year. 

“It is hard to imagine pre-trial detention,” said Epner, a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC. “Absent that, there are not many other sanctions that would be likely to be effective.”

Spinning prosecution into campaign PR

The criminal indictment of Trump for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss has to date helped the former president establish his place as the current Republican frontrunner for 2024. 

In New York, the first criminal case filed against Trump gave him a sizable boost in standing with GOP primary voters. His support spiked a stunning 10 percentage points from roughly 44% to roughly 54%, according to the 538 aggregation of national polls. 

And ever since then Trump has coasted through his third run for president with upward of 50% of support. 

Trump himself has basked in the notoriety he’s earned as the first president to face criminal charges, repeatedly inserting the issue into the race. 

His 2016 race was largely built around a focus on Hillary Clinton’s emails and his promise that he would make Mexico pay to build a wall along the Southern border. This cycle, Trump has repeatedly said he’s a victim and told crowds, “I’m being indicted for you.” 

He’s used it as a fundraising tactic, and used those campaign funds to cover his extensive legal bills. 

And just hours before he left New Jersey for the Washington courtroom where he turned himself in, Trump posted a statement, in all caps, “I NEED ONE MORE INDICTMENT TO ENSURE MY ELECTION!”

A 2020 replay?

President Joe Biden flashed confidence throughout the day Thursday as the nation awaited his predecessor’s arrival at court. 

As he was riding his bike in Rehoboth, Delaware, a CNN journalist asked if he was paying attention to Trump’s arraignment today. The president replied, “No.” 

Meanwhile, his campaign tweeted a video of Biden taking a sip from a coffee mug with his “Dark Brandon” visage on the front, as he said, “I like my coffee dark.” 

Biden is hardly in a strong position as he seeks re-election as the oldest president in U.S. history at 80, running neck and neck with the 77-year-old Trump in most national polls and facing dwindling support nationwide and low favorability ratings after 2 1/2 years in office. But, the third and most damning of the criminal charges against Trump, reinserts Trump’s 2020 loss and subsequent January 6th attack into the center of the race. 

Whereas the first criminal case against Trump has been perceived as middling, and the second as arcane (given the limits surrounding the revealing of classified intelligence in public), this criminal case reignites a well-known story of how Trump floated wild conspiracy theories and whipped his supporters into a fury before they attacked the Capitol on January 6th. 

Public opinion has vacillated on what exactly January 6th should be labeled and how it should be viewed — but the vast majority of the country has either deemed it a threat to democracy or a terrible incident which the country should move on from. 

This third criminal case against Trump guarantees that it will be at least 15 months until the country can put that day behind it, though it’s far from clear how that even goes.

“It's now impossible to see how he can win the general election,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime political operative and former communications director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, said of Trump. “But that's what I thought in 2016.”