Donald Trump charged with 34 felony counts in hush money scheme

Former President Donald Trump appears in court for his arraignment Tuesday in New York. Pic/AP

A stone-faced Donald Trump made a momentous courtroom appearance Tuesday when he was confronted with a 34-count felony indictment charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign.

The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom was a stunning - and humbling - spectacle for the first ex-president to ever face criminal charges. With Trump watching in silence, prosecutors bluntly accused him of criminal conduct and set stage for a possible criminal trial in the city where he became a celebrity decades ago. The indictment centers on allegationsTrump falsified internal business records at his private company while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy. It includes 34 counts of fudging records related to checks Trump sent to his personal lawyer and problem-solver to reimburse him for his role in paying off a porn actor who said she had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

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The payments were made to two women - the porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, and a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed to have a story about a child Trump fathered out of wedlock, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. "The defendant, Donald J. Trump, falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws," said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy. Trump said "not guilty" in a firm voice while facing a judge who warned him to refrain from rhetoric that could inflame or cause civil unrest. All told, the ever-verbose Trump, who for weeks before Tuesday's arraignment had assailed the case against him as political persecution, uttered only 10 words in the courtroom. He appeared to glare for a period at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case.

As he returned to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where he spoke to hundreds of supporters, Trump again asserted on his Truth Social platform that the "hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,' and therefore, no case." "I never thought anything like this could happen in America," Trump said of the New York indictment. "This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately."

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