Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations that he had extramarital sexual encounters.
The former president, 76 became the first sitting or former president to face criminal charges in a historic arraignment in New York on Tuesday.
One of the charges relates to hush-money payments Trump is alleged to have paid to cover up a child conceived out of wedlock.
The former president, who forcefully denies wrongdoing , w as escorted from his own plush Trump Tower into a side entrance to the “grimy” Manhattan Criminal Courthouse by Secret Services and the New York Police Department.
He was formally arrested and processed at the court and had his fingerprints taken.
Court officials will create a record of his name, age, birthdate, height and weight before taking his fingerprints via a computerized system.
He also learned the exact 34 charges against him for the first time before taking an elevator usually reserved for judges into the media-free chamber on the 15th floor.
Scores of Trump fans, including controversial figures Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, turned out to support the former US president and front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“He is strong and ready to go,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said before the hearing.
“We know the basis of the indictment and the factual allegations in the indictment,” Tacopina said, adding that Trump would maintain his innocence.
“One thing I can assure you as I sit here today: There’ll be no guilty plea in this case. That’s one thing I can guarantee you,” he said.
Tacopina appeared to predict that the case would ultimately be dismissed.
“I don’t think this case is going to see a juror,” he said. “I think there’s a legal challenge that will be made and should be made successfully.”
Trump, a former reality TV star-turned-politician, has been hyping that narrative to his political advantage, saying he raised more than $8 million in the days since the indictment on claims of a “witch hunt.”
His campaign released a fundraising request titled “My last email before arrest” and he has repeatedly assailed the Manhattan district attorney, egged on supporters to protest and claimed without evidence that the judge presiding over the case “hates me” — something his own lawyer has said is not true.
Trump is scheduled to return to his Palm Beach, Florida, home, Mar-a-Lago, on Tuesday evening to give remarks, punctuating his new reality: submitting to the dour demands of the American criminal justice system while projecting an aura of defiance and victimhood at celebratory campaign events. At least 500 prominent supporters have been invited, with some of the most pro-Trump congressional Republicans expected to attend.
A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.
The investigation is scrutinizing six-figure payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both say they had sexual encounters with the married Trump years before he got into politics.
Trump denies having sexual liaisons with either woman and has denied any wrongdoing involving payments.
Trump was defiant ahead of his arraignment. He used his social media network to complain that he was going to court in a heavily Democratic area, declaring, “KANGAROO COURT”.
He and his campaign have repeatedly assailed Bragg and even trained scrutiny on members of Bragg’s family.
On social media site Truth Social, which Trump owns, he today wrote an all-caps message accusing the “radical left democrats” of having “criminalised the justice system”. He added: “This is not what America was supposed to be!”
In another message, also penned entirely in capital letters, he described the judge set to preside over his case as “highly partisan”, accusing him and his family of being “well known Trump haters”.
