Trump Arrested for Second Time in Mar-a-Lago Probe

Donald Trump has been arrested again.

The former president turned himself over to authorities in Miami on Tuesday, to be arraigned after being charged last week with 37 federal counts related to his handling of classified material. Trump stayed at his nearby Doral resort on Monday night, and left for the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. federal courthouse a little after 1:30 p.m. local time.

The court prohibited journalists from bringing any phones or electronic devices into the courthouse, although a transcript of the proceedings was provided. Trump was not be handcuffed and did not have his mugshot taken, although his fingerprints were taken with a digital scanner. Special Counsel Jack Smith was in the room as Trump’s arraignment began at around 3 p.m. local time. Trump, who reportedly did not look at Smith at any point during the proceedings, pleaded not guilty to all 37 counts through his attorney Todd Blanche.

Rolling Stone reported Monday night on the chaos within Trump’s legal team ahead of his second indictment and arrest, and the situation unraveled to the point that the former president was forced to spend Monday scrambling to find attorneys to represent him during the arraignment on Tuesday. He ultimately tapped Blanche and Chris Kise.

Trump spent most of Tuesday ranting on Truth Social. “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE!!!” he wrote shortly before leaving for the courthouse. “ON MY WAY TO COURTHOUSE,” he added a few minutes later. “WITCH HUNT!!! MAGA.”

The former headed to Versailles, a well-known Cuban restaurant in Miami, after pleading not guilty. “Food for everyone!” he reportedly yelled as he was swarmed by people. Walt Nauta, a Trump aide who was indicted last week and arrested Tuesday along with the former president, was there with him. A group of people appeared to be praying for him.

City officials had been bracing for the possibility of large crowds outside the courthouse ahead of the historic arraignment. “We are taking this very seriously,” Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez said Monday at a press conference, citing plans for stepped-up security measures. Security was noticeably more lax that it was when Trump was arrested in Manhattan in April, although hundreds of supporters and opponents of the former president congregated outside the glass-coated, two-tower downtown Miami courthouse, which has a ground-level outdoor plaza, which was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Editor’s picks

The circus-like cast of characters who showed up included Osmany Estrada, an anti-Trump demonstrator who was wearing a Cuban flag and toting a severed pig’s head on a stick (a visual reference to the novel Lord of the Flies, he said without elaboration). He supports President BIden. “He is governing. That’s the important thing,” said Estrada, who says he was 14 when he fled Cuba and floated to Florida on a raft in 1992, told Rolling Stone. “I left a government that politicized everything. I don’t fall in love or commit to any political party. It’s about solving problems … American democracy is not perfect, but it works.”

Estrada and a few other dissidents aside, the scene had the vibe of a Trump campaign event. The crowd generally remained calm amid the oppressive heat and humidity, with many of the former president’s supporters arguing that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

“I’m here to support our real president, Donald Trump,” said Taylor Foland, who works for the Republican Executive Committee of Volusia County, Florida, and helped Trump win Florida in the 2020 presidential election campaign. “He’s a businessman. He’s not a politician. We need a businessman to run the country.”

Barbara, a 69-year-old who lives in the Orlando area and declined to say her last name, said she and other Trump supporters now realize how far government will go to unfairly prosecute the former president: “We have to stand up. We’re awake now.” Related

Trump supporter George Sarkisian, 74, a resident of Fort Myers, said the former president’s popularity will overcome his legal problems. “They’ve been attacking President Trump since 2015, and it’s one indictment after another — but each indictment, his popularity grows,” he said. “The only way they can stop him is to put him in prison, and politically, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Trump had encouraged his supporters to gather around the courthouse in Miami and protest the federal charges against him. “They have to go out and they have to protest peacefully,” he said during a radio interview with his ally Roger Stone. Trump clearly wants to turn the indictment into a rallying point for his supporters. He’s also been fundraising off the indictment, and flew to New Jersey after the arraignment to speak at his club in Bedminster, railing against Biden and Special Counsel Smith. Trending

Trump faces a 37-count grand jury indictment on charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, and concealing a document in a federal investigation. The charges stem from his alleged refusal to cooperate with a prolonged government effort to retrieve scores of classified material Trump took to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving the White House in 2021. Trump’s residence is about a two-hour drive from the federal courthouse in downtown Miami, where he became the first former president to be arrested on federal charges. Trump became the first former president to be arrested, period, in April when he was taken into custody in Manhattan on dozens of charges of falsifying business records.

The former president and his boosters have portrayed both indictments as a gross miscarriage of justice that must be protested, and the MAGA contingent is clearly determined to demonstrate. But it was an anti-Trump protesters who caused the biggest stir on Tuesday. As Trump was leaving the courthouse later in the afternoon, a man dressed up in old-fashioned prison garb hopped out from the crowd and planted himself in front of the motorcade, holding up a sign that read “Lock Him Up.” He tried to scurry back into the crowd of flag-waving Trump supporters before three officers grabbed him whisked him away in a police car.