Trump pleads not guilty to 2020 election charges at arraignment after arrest – live

After two previous indictments, the novelty of prosecuting a former president may have worn off. But the latest criminal charges against Donald Trump represent an unprecedented stress test for the American political system.

Alex Woodward reports how a sprawling Justice Department probe into the former president and his allies yielded four criminal charges in a stunning indictment outlining a path to power at whatever cost.

While campaigning in New Hampshire over the weekend, Mr DeSantis spoke to a group of supporters in the backyard of former Massachusettes Senator Scott Brown who hosted a barbecue for Mr DeSantis.

While there, the Florida governor addressed how he would handle problems that he sees in the federal government.

Ariana Baio reports on what he said.

Nearly 70 per cent of Republicans believe that President Joe Biden is not a legitimately elected president, according to a new CNN poll.

The survey showed that 69 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters do not think Mr Biden is a legitimately elected president, up six points from earlier this year. This comes despite the fact that no evidence of significant voter fraud has proven that Mr Biden’s election was anything other than legitimate.

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump, Alina Habba, attempted to deflect the news cycle to focus on Hunter Biden as her client was about to be arraigned earlier this afternoon.

Kelly Rissman reports on what she said outside the DC federal courthouse where the former president appeared this afternoon.

It was a scene both unprecedented and, in a wild year, increasingly familiar: Donald Trump arriving in a courtroom to enter a plea on serious charges of misconduct.

On Thursday, he appeared at the E Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, where he pleaded not guilty to four charges accusing him and conspirators of attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Read more about the plea and the special counsel investigation that launched it with this report from Andrew Feinberg and Alex Woodward.

Donald Trump just faced his third arraignment in four months over his most consequential indictment yet. Trump stood in the same DC courthouse where over 1,000 January 6 rioters have appeared. Trump pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he led a multifaceted criminal conspiracy that sought to overturn American democracy. The same Constitution that Trump tried to undermine is now protecting him with due process rights. And now, Trump is shamelessly exploiting this process to bolster his campaign in his desperate re-election bid to keep himself out of prison.

If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president, the 2024 election will be a referendum on his criminality. He now faces 78 felony charges between his three indictments and his road to potential re-election is paved with trials. The Trump Organization fraud case is in October 2023, the second E Jean Carroll defamation trial is in January 2024, the hush money trial is in March 2024, and the classified documents trial is in May 2024. And soon, there will be a trial scheduled for this new 2020 election conspiracy. Trump could theoretically face 641 years in prison given his charges.

The legal defenses Trump has attempted are flimsy at best. Trump knows his legal troubles are overwhelming and the chances of conviction are increasing with each indictment. This is too big to ignore, so he’s trying to flip the script and make his indictments a key part of his campaign message. Rather than engaging in a serious legal defense, it appears Trump and his team are prioritizing a political defense.

Read Ahmed Baba’s full column for Independent Voices.

Thursday marked the third time Donald Trump has appeared in court since leaving the White House to face serious criminal or civil charges.

Watch what happened below.

Before departing from Washington DC after being arraigned on four federal charges, ex-president Donald Trump gave quick remarks in which he claimed the capitol had “filth”, “decay” and “broken buildings”.

Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, was in the courtroom and noted that several of the federal judges of the district court filled the back row — including Chief Judge James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, and Randy Moss.