MIAMI – Protesters showed up on Tuesday with signs on T-shirts, MAGA hats, flags — and even the head of a dead pig on a stick — outside of the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday in downtown Miami.
Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet, an Alaska-based far-right video blogger who served two months in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots, also traveled to the courthouse, at 400 N Miami Ave., to talk to supporters.
When former President Donald Trump’s motorcade was leaving, Domenick Santana, a protester who was wearing a black and white striped jail suit costume, ran in front of one of the U.S. Secret Service vehicles.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement had secured the courthouse and its surrounding perimeter ahead of Trump’s arrival Monday at Miami International Airport. There were drones and dogs.
Police officers were ready to handcuff Santana, who had been demonstrating with a “Lock Him Up” sign since Monday afternoon outside of the Doral golf club where Trump spent Monday night.
“I grew up in New York City. I know what a con artist he is,” Santana said on Wednesday while protesting in Doral.
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, Trump surrendered Tuesday and he was fingerprinted, but did not stand for a mug shot, during the booking process at the courthouse.
Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, and not U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed, presided over Trump’s arraignment hearing.
The front-runner for the Republican 2024 nomination then pleaded not guilty to 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.
After leaving the courthouse, Trump stopped at the Versailles Restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana where he met with Cuban-American Christian and Jewish religious leaders who prayed for him.
Attorney Alina Habba, who is part of Trump’s legal team, told reporters outside of the courthouse that today was not about “Trump, who is defiant. It is not about the Republican Party, it is not about the 2024 election. It is about the destruction of longstanding principles that have set this country apart.”
Trump had announced the indictment on Thursday night on the Truth Social platform and referred to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who leads the case, as a “deranged lunatic,” a “Trump hater” and a “psycho.”
A federal grand jury indicted the 45th president of the United States on Friday. Smith, a U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointee, announced the indictment.
The document 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 about the classified documents, according to the indictment. “I don’t want you looking through my boxes!”
The National Archives and Records Administration had 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.
The indictment alleged 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.
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