Trump to appear in court on 2020 election charges, Security ramps up
Washington, The Gulf Observer: Former United States President Donald Trump will appear in court to answer charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, a case set to cast a dark and volatile cloud over the 2024 White House race for which he remains the presumptive Republican nominee.
“I am now going to Washington, DC to be arrested for having challenged a corrupt, rigged and stolen election,” the billionaire posted on his Truth Social site, defiantly repeating what special counsel Jack Smith has called the “lies” about the 2020 vote that are at the heart of the indictment against him.
“It is a great honor, because I am being arrested for you,” Trump told his social media followers.
Metal barricades and municipal trucks formed a security ring around the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington on Thursday, where the arrest and arraignment of the former president will take place.
Police and sniffer dogs gathered outside the court, where scores of reporters from the world’s media had camped overnight to seek a spot inside.
The 77-year-old Trump is expected to enter a plea of not guilty at a hearing at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) before magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya. He is likely to be fingerprinted but not have a mugshot taken.
The accusations that Trump and six unnamed co-conspirators plotted to upend the 2020 election result is the former president’s third criminal indictment since March, and the most serious of the cases threatening to derail his comeback bid.
Earlier, he slammed the alleged “unprecedented weaponisation” of the Justice Department in a post on Truth Social, accusing President Joe Biden of seeking to charge him with “as many crimes as can be concocted.”
“But soon, in 2024, it will be our turn,” he wrote.
Biden, for his part, kept up his reticence over his rival’s legal peril.
When asked during a morning bike ride while vacationing in Delaware if he would be following the arraignment, his response was a curt “No”.
‘Knowingly false claims’
Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, unveiled a 45-page indictment of Trump on Tuesday, charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States and attempting to disenfranchise American voters with his false claims that he won the November 2020 election.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud,” the indictment said.
Smith linked Trump’s actions following his loss to Biden directly to the attack on the Capitol, which he called an “unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
“It was fueled by lies,” Smith said.
Trump is already scheduled to go on trial in Florida in May of next year on charges that he took top secret government documents to his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida and refused to return them.
The new conspiracy charges raise the prospect of Trump being further embroiled in legal proceedings at the height of what is expected to be a bitter presidential campaign.
As president, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for seeking political dirt on Biden from Ukraine and for his role in the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.
