By Katie Adamson

Photo credit: Dominick Reuter | AFP | Getty Images.

The eyes of the world were on New York City last month as former President Donald J. Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. For the first time in American history, a former president has been indicted for committing a crime. 

On April 5, Trump faced criminal charges over a series of hush-money deals. Prosecutors say he made these deals to conceal alleged affairs with three separate women, according to an unsealed indictment that was made public on Tuesday, April 4. The women claimed to have had an affair with Trump, and one woman allegedly spoke to a former Trump doorman who made an unproven claim that Trump had an out-of-wedlock child, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump pleaded not guilty in person in a New York City courtroom in a surreal arraignment that marks the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and condemned the indictment as political persecution.

While there had been some discussion about Trump speaking to the media while in the courthouse, he did not do so. Instead, Trump responded during his event at Mar-a-Lago that night, making his first on-camera remarks while surrounded by supporters.

“The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” the 76-year-old told supporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida after appearing in court in New York. He said the “fake case” was simply part of a Democratic conspiracy to interfere with next year’s presidential election, where he’ll likely be a candidate and the GOP frontrunner.

Ahead of the indictment, Trump had called on his supporters to protest his anticipated arrest, which stoked worries about possible violence and prompted even some in Trump’s party to stress that any protests should stay peaceful.

While he was warned by Judge Juan Merchan during the arraignment not to make comments that could “jeopardize the rule of law” or create civil unrest, Trump castigated Bragg and the judge himself later that evening. 

Photo credit: Curtis Means.

Trump’s attorneys responded that Trump has First Amendment rights and said that he was expressing his frustration with alleged illegal leaks about the indictment from the district attorney’s office. Trump’s lawyers also claimed that Trump’s social media posts were not threatening.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alleged in a press release that Trump deployed “catch and kill” schemes before and after the 2016 presidential election to bury allegations of three affairs, then “went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity.”

Trump’s actions amounted to “attempts to violate state and federal election laws,” the DA’s office alleges—the schemes were intended to hide “damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” Bragg said in a statement.

Along with the indictment, Bragg also released a “statement of facts” document outlining a larger scheme that he said Trump and others had orchestrated to avoid negative press during the 2016 campaign. 

Trump is the focus of three other investigations, related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s victory, and the former president’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

Article II of the United States Constitution states that there are only two requirements for the presidency: the President must be 35 years old or older and a natural-born U.S. resident who has lived in the country for 14 years. Due to the “constitutional ceiling,” which prohibits any additional qualifications for the presidency, the Constitution does not require that the president be free from indictment, conviction, or prison. This means that a person under indictment or in prison may run for office and may even serve as president, which would currently apply to former President Trump. However, the prolonged legal fight could prove a major distraction for the Republican front-runner and may add a new layer of turmoil to his party’s primaries. 

Along with the current indictment trial, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a civil lawsuit on Wed., May 10. E. Jean Carroll, an American journalist, author, and advice columnist alleges Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Upon filing a lawsuit last year accusing Trump of battery and defamation, the former president denied Carroll’s allegation and publicly called her a liar. While still hoping to run as a presidential candidate in the upcoming 2024 election, former President Trump has many legal cases to sort through before he can begin campaigning.