Donald Trump has returned to Washington today, the city he left on January 20, 2021 in the Air Force One presidential plane, when he still had four hours left as president of the United States. That cold winter morning at the Edwards Trump Air Force Base, he delivered a brief speech to his followers with a phrase that many did not forget: “Somehow, we will return.”
Since then, Trump had only returned to Washington on a single occasion, just one year ago, on July 26, 2022, as an electoral candidate, to give a lecture at a think tank created to give visibility to his political career, America First. Institute.
Today he has returned for the third time. But she has done it in very different circumstances. She has not arrived on Air Force One, but on his private plane, which has taken off from the Newark airport, in New Jersey – a known gateway for many tourists who go to neighboring New York – and has landed in washington. He has done it to be arrested, although that does not mean that he will go to jail, but simply that the four charges against him will be read to him for which he will be tried for, essentially, trying to steal the 2020 elections. At four local time (10:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time), the former president of the United States must appear before Judge Moxila Upadyaha, who will read the charges against him.
The 77-year-old former president arrived at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, the seat of the court and very close to the US Capitol, at around 3:14 p.m., amid great media expectation and a strong police presence. Thus, the police will be able to take the fingerprints of the former president, and read him the “Miranda rights”, which is the paragraph that has made Hollywood famous when the ‘bad guy’ in the movie is arrested (“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court…”). It seems unlikely that the agents are going to take the classic front and profile photos of Trump next to a scale, something that was not done in the other two arrests to which he has been subjected in the last four months, in New York and Miami. The authorities of Georgia, where the former president faces a fourth criminal investigation, also for an alleged attempt to falsify the electoral results, have declared that, if an accusation occurs, Trump will be photographed as one more alleged criminal.
After being “prosecuted” – which is how that identification is called in police slang – Trump is appearing before Judge Moxila Upadyayha, who is reading the four charges formulated by the special prosecutor in the case, Jack Smith, also present, and, predictably, it will impose certain limitations on his actions and, above all, on his contacts with the other six defendants in the process, all of them his collaborators in the White House and among whom the former mayor of New York and former candidate stands out. Republican to the presidency in 2008 Rudy Giuliani. Unsurprisingly, the former president has pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. The judge has agreed to release Trump and has set the next hearing for August 28
The entire process will take place in the Washington Courthouse, next to the enormous National Gallery, the new headquarters of the Johns Hopkins University School of International Relations… and, paradoxically, 300 meters from the Capitol, the building that houses to the two houses of Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – that Trump supporters stormed on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent the ratification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. It could be said that the trial will be, literally, at the scene of the crime, although, as Smith was in charge of remembering on Tuesday, when announcing the indictment, “Donald Trump remains innocent until a court decides otherwise.” In any case, the scenario is not very promising for the former president. In the court where he is going to testify, more than a thousand participants in the assault on the Capitol have been sentenced to jail.
None of this seems to have intimidated the former president. Trump posted a message this morning on his Truth social network stating that “I need one more imputation to ensure the election”, in reference to his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections. The former president is first, with a virtually insurmountable advantage, in the polls for the Republican Party nomination. 69% of voters in that formation believe that Joe Biden stole the election.
Although today’s session is before Upadyayha, the process will be led by another magistrate, Tanya Chutkan. Unlike Aileen Cannon, the judge who is investigating another of the cases against Trump, in Miami, Chutkan does not sympathize with the president. Perhaps this has influenced the fact that neither Trump nor her followers have insulted or threatened her or her family, as they have done with Judge Juan Merchan, who is leading the third case against the former president, in New York. . In total, Trump faces 74 charges in those three jurisdictions. And there is still the aforementioned research from Georgia. That may be the one he needs to win the 2024 election, even if it’s from jail, given that Chutkan seems less inclined than Cannon to accept the former president’s delaying tactics, so the attempted voter fraud trial may well be held before the 2024 elections.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
