Trump to plea not guilty to 37 charges at federal court in downtown Miami

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican 2024 nomination, is set to surrender to federal authorities at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday in downtown Miami.

Trump’s arraignment hearing is at 3 p.m., on Tuesday, and he is set to plead not guilty to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida and New Jersey.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, a U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointee, announced on Friday that a federal grand jury had indicted the 45th president of the United States.

Trump is facing 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, a scheme to conceal, and false statements and representations.

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The indictment included photographs of the classified documents stored at The Mar-a-Lago Club in cardboard boxes near a toilet and shower in a bathroom, on the stage of a ballroom, in an office, in a bedroom, and in a storage room.

“I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,” Trump told one of his attorneys, according to the indictment. “I don’t want you looking through my boxes!”

The National Archives and Records Administration asked the U.S. Department of Justice for help to recover documents last year and this resulted in the May 2022 grand jury subpoena and the FBI raid in August.

The content of some of the documents the FBI recovered included another country’s “nuclear capabilities,” U.S. “nuclear weaponry,” and “military operations” against the U.S., according to the indictment.

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The indictment alleges one of Trump’s attorneys found 38 classified documents in the storage room, placed them in a folder, and closed it with duct tape.

Some of the boxes also allegedly traveled from Mar-a-Lago and on a plane to be delivered to Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Trump announced the indictment on Thursday night on the Truth Social platform and referred to Smith as a “deranged lunatic,” a “Trump hater” and a “psycho.” On Saturday, during a rally in Georgia, Trump said the charges were baseless.

“This wasn’t somebody smuggling boxes out,” Trump said adding the indictment was a “joke.”

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