Over the past four decades, Donald Trump has faced some 4,100 court cases, according to a 2016 estimate by USA Today. That’s about enough material to film the Law & Order TV series eight and a half times. Trump’s thousands of cases span almost everything in the civil arena. Suspension of payments for hundreds of millions of dollars, sexual abuse, tax fraud, fraud, breach of contract or violation of electoral law are some of the cases that have been launched against the former president of the United States -or that he has launched against others- which makes him, without a doubt, the businessman who has gone to court the most times in the first world power.
But none of these procedures has had the seriousness of the one that began this Tuesday in the city of Miami, Florida.
As of Tuesday, Trump is indicted for the commission of alleged federal crimes, based on, among others, the violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, due to his decision to take documents and state secrets from the White House in the last hours of his presidency and refuse to return them. Those are very serious accusations. They are largely based on the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to Stalin’s Soviet Union, and virtually all of the prison sentences life sentence without redemption to spies of the last decades.
The 37 charges corresponding to seven crimes that were read to him, and to which he pleaded not guilty, this Tuesday against Donald Trump in Miami are federal. That places them on a much higher plane than those of the process in which he is as a defendant in New York for violation of the legislation of that state. Federal charges tend to carry much heavier penalties, because they affect US federal law – that is, not the law of each of the 50 states – and are therefore often national in scope – as in this case – impacting the national interests of the country.
The differences do not end there. Federal prosecutors tend to have more human and budgetary resources to carry out their work, which makes defending defendants more difficult and complex. In the case of Donald Trump, this problem is exacerbated because most of his legal team have resigned because the former president did not tell them the truth about the theft of the documents. As recorded on page 21 of the indictment, Trump went so far as to tell his lawyers to lie to investigators by calmly proposing, “Wouldn’t we just tell them we don’t have anything here?”
The fright of the lawyers reached the point that until Tuesday morning, just six hours before the appearance before Judge Aileen Cannon, Trump did not have a Florida lawyer to accompany him. And that was something critical, since the legislation of that state requires that it be an accredited lawyer (in the bar, as it is known in the US) there who represents, even formally, the defendant in the reading of the charges. The image of the former president of the United States represented by a public defender would have been one more humiliation for Trump.
A humiliation to which the former president reacted by taking out the political instincts that made him head of state and government in 2016 and have placed him in 2023 as an absolute favorite to contest the presidency again. While the presidential motorcade -every former president continues to have the right to an official vehicle with enormous security measures- crossed the access highways to Miami, where traffic had been interrupted -again, a common practice- Trump posted a message, all in capital letters, on his microblogging social network, Truth Social: “One of the saddest days in the history of our country. We are a nation in decline.” Shortly thereafter, with only a few minutes to go to enter the federal courthouse in Miami, Trump returned to Truth Social and continued in all caps: “On my way to courthouse. Witch hunt! MAGA.”
Later, the car in which the president was traveling disappeared from view as it passed through one of the garage doors of the building that houses the federal courthouse in Miami. The television cameras did not capture the moment, because it was a closed area. The rest of the caravan entered the tower through another, more visible door, which was cordoned off by the Miami Police – like the annex building – in the face of the danger of riots from Trump supporters and his critics. The Secret Service, which is in charge of Trump’s security as a former president, demanded that the area around the building be blocked off with concrete barriers, but the Miami police, who are responsible for security, he refused it.
Once in the basement, a protocol agreed between the FBI and the Secret Service was followed. Unable to enter through the front door due to the risk of violence, Trump and his team – lawyers and bodyguards – took a forklift that took them directly to a floor where the FBI was waiting for them. The agents of this body -in practice, the only police that deals with the entire national territory in the US- informed Trump that he was under arrest, although this does not imply that, as is usual in many cases, he was handcuffed. Rather, being arrested means that a person is under the jurisdiction of the State. The FBI agents did not handcuff him, as Trump technically turned himself in. But they did read him his Miranda rights, as the phrases “you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you, you have the right to a lawyer, you have the right to a lawyer is present at your interrogation”.
The agents then took Trump to the office of the marshal (marshall, in English) of the federal court, Gadyaces Serralta. The marshals are officials appointed by the president -Serralta was, in fact, put in office by Trump- who obey the attorney general -a position equivalent to that of Minister of Justice in Spain- but who is in charge of the perfect functioning of the legal and federal courts (not state courts).
Serralta oversaw what is commonly referred to as “the prosecution”: the fingerprinting of Trump, the insertion of a swab into the president’s mouth to scrape it and obtain a sample of his DNA, and the taking of several photographs. There was no mugshot, that is, the classic photo of the detainees from the front and in profile with a scale behind to measure their height, for fear that these images would be filtered and turned into an element of political struggle and, according to the defense of the former president, because he does not present a flight risk.
Outside, a spokeswoman for Trump’s team, Alina Habba, his most faithful adviser and ally, read a brief statement in which he compared Trump’s arrest to the transformation of the United States into Cuba or Venezuela. “We have reached a moment in the history of our country in which the persecution of political opponents is the type of thing that you see in Cuba and in Venezuela. What is being done to President Trump should is to terrorize the citizens of this country “.
Finally, Donald Trump, the politician who in October 2016 promised his rival, Hillary Clinton, in a debate that, when he won the elections, “you will be in jail”, went on to have Judge Aileen Cannon read the charges to him for his seven federal offenses that can theoretically see him spend the rest of his life in jail.
There are no photos, but the testimony of the 10 or so journalists present indicates that Trump was serious, arms crossed in a defensive position as the judge in the case Aileen Canon listed the 37 charges and 7 crimes against him. His lawyers responded by stating that his client pleaded “not guilty,” and Cannon adjourned the session, but not before forbidding Trump from discussing the issues of the case with anyone unless his attorneys are present. A warning that, given the loquacity of the president, it is not clear that it will be fulfilled.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project