Trump downplays charges, insults ‘trembling thug’ special counsel in golf club speech

Hours after he was criminally charged in a federal courtroom in Miami, Donald Trump returned to his New Jersey club to deliver a barrage of false statements and declare his innocence in front of a throng of supporters.

The former president, who has routinely used his platforms to project allegations he faces toward his political enemies, lambasted the federal case against him as “the most evil and heinous abuse of power” under president Joe Biden, who Mr Trump falsely suggested was responsible for charging him.

“This day will go down in infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country but perhaps, even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxist tried to destroy American democracy,” Mr Trump said.

For the second time in three months, the man who served as the 45th President of the United States stood before a judge as a defendant in a criminal case that could cost his freedom for a significant portion of his remaining lifespan.

Flanked by attorneys Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, Donald Trump entered a Miami federal courtroom as US Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman formally presented him with a 37-count indictment accusing the former president of illegally retaining national defense documents and other classified materials at his Florida home, and obstructing government efforts to reclaim them.

Asked to enter a plea to the charges, Mr Blanche replied on behalf of the twice-impeached and now twice-indicted former president: “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty.”

Andrew Feinberg in Miami and Alex Woodward in New York filed this report.

The ex-president delivered a roughly 30-minute address to a crowd of fans who descended upon the golf club to hear him swipe at political rivals and anyone else whose own actions he thought could be used to paint his own as harmless.

It was a rambling speech broken up by an impromptu singing of “Happy Birthday” from Mr Trump’s harmonically-challenged fans, whose rendition of the tune dissolved into a slurred mess by the conclusion.

But it was also revealing in that it previewed the roughshod defence that Mr Trump and his legal team apparently hope to make before a judge, as the former president aimed a shotgun-like spray of similar accusations at nearly every other prominent occupant of the White House of the past decade and a half.

So what can we learn from the former president’s remarks?

My colleague John Bowden explains:

Fox News host John Roberts apologised to viewers during a broadcast on Tuesday afternoon after the network mistakenly misidentified a woman as Donald Trump’s wife Melania.

As the network was broadcasting a live feed of Miami, Florida where Mr Trump was arraigned in his federal indictment, they put the spotlight on a woman with long hair wearing large sunglasses.

Clemence Michallon writes:

Trump isn’t just being arraigned, he is being arraigned again. This should make these new proceedings more damning, not less, than the first, and yet, I worry that some might experience today with a sense of deja vu. And with that sense of deja vu might come a slight dulling of our experience as witnesses to that event. We might, already, be getting used to it — seeing the former president turn up in court, speculating as to whether he will pose for a booking photo, waiting to hear his plea.

Fox News identified President Joe Biden as a “wannabe dictator” in a wildly misleading caption on Tuesday night while simultaniously airing former President Donald Trump’s speech to supporters at his Bedminster golf club New Jersey and Mr Biden’s remarks at the White House.

Abe Asher has the details.

Former President Donald Trump has finally addressed the reason he allegedly failed to return boxes of classified documents to the federal government: he’d put his clothes in them.

Abe Asher has the details of what he said.