‘The law has finally caught up with Donald Trump’: Ex-President arraigned on 34 felony charges

Former U.S. president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts involving alleged hush money payments to two women during the 2016 election in bids to cover up sex scandals.

Trump surrendered to police and was fingerprinted before appearing in a Manhattan courtroom for his arraignment on charges related to six-figure payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential election in attempts to silence allegations of extramarital affairs.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. published the indictment against Trump. According to a summary from Bragg’s office, the former president is being charged for allegedly “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

The summary continues:

During the election, Trump and others employed a “catch and kill” scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects. Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.

“Donald Trump has consistently proven that he was a lawless president and unfit for public office. History will remember Donald Trump not only as the first president to be impeached twice, but the first president to be indicted on criminal charges,” U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said in a statement following the arraignment.

“Falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments is only the beginning of the crimes Trump has committed. He must also be held to account for conspiring to overturn an election, inciting a fascist insurrection, and fueling white supremacist violence,” she continued.

“Today, the law has finally caught up with Donald Trump and his corrupt and reckless behavior,” Tlaib added. “No one is above the law, no matter how rich or powerful they are. The American people deserve to see accountability handed down. Let justice be served.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump for decades, told Democracy Now! Tuesday morning that “hopefully this is the beginning of a revival and a renewal of American democracy.”

“There is an enormous amount of people in America, across the political spectrum, who believe that we have one set of laws for the rich and powerful, and one set of laws for them,” Johnston continued.

“This shows that we are making further progress toward the far-from-fulfilled promise of equal justice under law,” he added. “And this will not be the last indictment of Donald Trump.”