The Daily - What It Was Like at Donald Trump’s Arraignment

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

The line for reporters seeking to be in the courtroom for Donald J. Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan started forming at 2 p.m. on Monday, more than a day before the former president was scheduled to face a judge in a case centered on hush-money payments.One of those who got in was Jonah Bromwich, a criminal justice correspondent for The Times.He tells us what it was like inside the courthouse as Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts.Guest: Jonah E. Bromwich, a criminal justice correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Trump pleaded not guilty, then sat quietly as lawyers sparred.The former president is accused of orchestrating a hush-money scheme to pave his path to the presidency and then covering it up from the White House.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Oh, hi Michael. Hi. Good morning, good morning. Hi, good morning. It's a nice day. It's a nice day. It's all you can ask. It's all the way.

It's going to be a long day. It's going to be like mid-60s, no jacket. So here we are. Here we are. Michael, can you orient us a little bit? Absolutely. It is 10.20 a.m. Tuesday, April 4th, and you and I are standing at the bottom

of what is essentially a small neighborhood of legal buildings and courthouses that if you've ever watched a procedural on TV, you recognize. It feels like every episode of Law & Order has some scene shot at the steps of one of these courthouses. And this is where history is going to be made today. This is where Donald Trump is going to show up

in his motorcade with the Secret Service, get out and surrender himself to the Manhattan District Attorney. And this is where a few hours later, Donald Trump is going to be arraigned in court. Charges are going to be read to him. He's going to have to enter a plea. That's the moment everyone's waiting for.

In the meantime, people have gathered across the street from the courthouse to protest this indictment and this impending arraignment, as well as express support for it and say that it needs to happen. And that is where we are headed now. Let's go. Okay, so this is interesting. This is a set of metal fences that are separating the two sides.

I think we're on the Trump side. On the other side is opponents of Trump. There are definitely more reporters and tourists here than there are Trump supporters. That's not entirely surprising. We are in Manhattan. Why are you here? It's very entirely surprising. We are in Manhattan. Why are you here? It's very, very complex. It's hard to put it into a sound bite.

He had sex with Stormy Daniels. And? What is that? What kind of crime is that? Trump should never have been in that office. It's time. It's long time coming. Tell me why you're here. Because they're arresting Donald Trump for nothing. It's unjust. I think this is pretty ridiculous and it's pretty obviously a political hit job.

The celebration is finally, finally there's some accountability. You're calling this a celebration, this rally? Instead? Yes, in a way, just because there's accountability. To get any accountability for someone doing criminal deeds and getting elected by, partially by doing criminal deeds, is a celebration. I'm here to support former President Trump.

And the law. I mean, I think if the crime, if any, was committed, it was harmless, didn't hurt anybody, who cares who he was with, you know? I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say too much, but I can tell that people get away with much worse things in the city all the time, you know? Can you tell me what your shirt says? It says, Ar arrest Trump. Yep. And that is happening today.

All right. Nice to meet you. Oh, here we come. Police car has just made the turn. Here it is. The motorcade has arrived. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Okay. There he is. I can see the back of Trump's head. You can see him walking away.

Today, what it was like as Donald Trump was charged with 34 felony counts. Trump is now in the building. He is surrendering himself. He's here. This is all very, very real right now. Literally right here at this corner of this street in Lower Manhattan, we are entering uncharted territory. My colleague, Jonah Bromwich,

takes us inside the courthouse where Trump was arraigned. It's Wednesday, April 5th. Jonah, just to begin, how did you even get inside this courtroom? Because as I left Lower Manhattan for the day, I noticed all these reporters, some of them very famous TV personalities, waiting in a line looking really crestfallen because they hadn't gotten into this courtroom. Oh, man, I hardly even know where to begin. So we understood that the line was going to work in a certain way.

People were going to line up, they were going to be given numbers, and then they were going to get in the courtroom based on those numbers. That turned out to be totally wrong. on those numbers. That turned out to be totally wrong. So the first assumption we made that was wrong was that the line would start sometime overnight, like kind of early Tuesday morning. The line started at 2 p.m. on Monday.

Wow. You know, more than 24 hours before the arraignment was scheduled. This is the line of journalists who get in the courtroom to see Donald Trump be arraigned. That's right. And we just got a little bit lucky in that I knew that there was supposed to be a line forming at one point. My colleague, Sean Bacoli, was down at the scene. And I said, Sean, just keep an eye out for any lines that seem to be forming. I don't think it'll happen, but just see what you can do.

And Sean said, there's a line. There's three people in it. I'm number four. And we had him and another of our colleagues, Nate Schweber, joined him. So we had spots number four and number seven in line. And we coordinated reporters throughout the night. And I got there shortly before 7.

So somebody spent the night in that line for you. Multiple people spent the night in line for us. This is Jonah Bromwich. I'm a court supporter with the New York Times. Now I can see the tents and the line of journalists who have been waiting since yesterday afternoon. So I showed up on Tuesday. I took over Brittany Kriegstein's spot.

She gave me her beach chair, which I later carried into the courthouse. All right, so I'm at the front of the line now, thanks to Brittany and Jason and five or six other colleagues who have been standing here. In the meantime, helicopters are circling overhead, and the sun is coming up over the federal court building to the south, and the tension in the line is just growing because you don't know whether you're going to get in.

And then finally, the court officers are now coming and checking the line, and it seems as if we're about to get our tickets. This group of court officers descends out of nowhere, and they start handing out these tickets, and there are three ticket colors. There's green, there's yellow, and there's white. I've got my green ticket,

which is essentially the equivalent of the golden ticket into this room. And it felt like getting a golden ticket, basically. Right. And when do you actually lay eyes on Donald Trump? So we get into the courthouse, and then I walk into this 15th floor courtroom. And I'm the first journalist to walk in, which was kind of remarkable, and just luck of the draw, really. And sit down and wait. You know, I'm sitting in the courtroom, so obviously I can't see anything. But we do hear these faint cheers from the crowd outside. And so what we

understood at that point is, okay, he seems to have made his way into the building. And then we know that he made his way up to the 15th floor, and the prosecutors come in, and the defense came in. And then Donald Trump walked into the courtroom. And I'm so used to seeing Donald Trump on TV or in his social media photo, just kind of seeming larger than life. And in that moment, what I see is someone who looks like a criminal defendant. He looks his age. He looks tired. He looks a little bit apprehensive. He looks his age. He looks tired. He looks a little bit apprehensive. He really felt human. And despite the court officers, despite all the hubbub, just seeing him, he looked significantly more normal than I would have expected him to. And it sounds like you're saying from your

experience watching him on TV and in rallies, a little diminished. Yes, 100%. And as we talk about what happened in the hearing, I think that sense just amplified and grew. Well, let's talk about that. Once he's in the room and this proceeding starts, what's happening? We're so used to, at this point, Donald Trump completely owning the room.

But the first thing that happens isn't even the arraignment. A lawyer for the Assembled Media stands up and argues that journalists should have greater access to this proceeding. And Trump is not the center of attention. You know, he's off to the side. He's not speaking. He has to listen to this person he doesn't know. And it really just sets the tone for everything that comes next.

And what does come next? That's the tone for everything that comes next. And what does come next? So 15 minutes go by and that portion is over. And then the judge, Juan Merchan, says, let's arraign Mr. Trump, please. So they do. They start to arraign Mr. Trump. A court official reads out the charges for the first time.

He's charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Which is a lot of counts. That is a lot of counts. And the clerk asked him how he pleads. He leans forward, he takes the mic, and he says two of the only words he's going to say. And it's so quiet because everyone has just been waiting to hear from Trump this entire time. And the two words are not guilty. So the prosecutors take over,

they start to describe the charges and outline them and say what they mean. And it's the first time we've heard this story in a courtroom. So the prosecutor, Chris Conroy, says that Trump falsified business records and he did so to promote his candidacy in 2016. And that's why we're here. But then Conrad goes further than that, because he also talks about Trump's true social posts of the last few weeks. And this is something that I didn't expect to come up, frankly. But Trump has recently tweeted that death and destruction would ensue were he to be charged.

He's tweeted threatening things about the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. Mr. Bragg is black and Mr. Trump has called him an animal. So the language on Truth Social has been quite ugly. And Chris Conroy, this prosecutor, brings that up. And again, I was just so struck because Trump, whose language we are talking about, even in the courtroom, is not speaking. And he's being spoken about. And he's being spoken about by people who have power over him, both the prosecutor and the judge who's hearing that complaint. And I have in my notebook, this is around 247, just the words, huge power shift.

Trump can't talk in here. Can't interrupt. Judge and prosecutors hold sway. Right. Not a familiar dynamic. Exactly. He's being silenced. Right. That's right. So what the prosecutor is doing here is that he's asking the judge to recognize that these statements have been problematic and potentially harmful. And he's asking the judge to recognize that these statements have been problematic and potentially harmful. And he's asking the judge to weigh in on that. A defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, stands up and disagrees with the prosecutor, says that these posts were born of frustration

and Mr. Trump has been frustrated by the way this case has been handled. But then, as happens in a courtroom, both parties turn to look at the judge. And what the judge says to the defense lawyer is, I don't share your view that certain language and certain rhetoric is justified by frustration. And he tells him to warn Trump to refrain from making comments or engaging in conduct that has the potential to incite violence, create civil unrest, or jeopardize the safety or well-being of any individuals. This judge is basically admonishing Trump, who's sitting a couple feet away from him, to behave himself when it comes to this case. Exactly. For his social media posts. You know, Trump's social media posts are so at the heart of what makes him a public figure. And so to see those posts in particular come up in the courtroom in this way, that was really, really striking to me.

So how does this proceeding ultimately come to an end? So there's a lot of procedural questions, and there's some back and forth between the lawyers. But that's pretty much it. And then all of a sudden, we're done. So Trump stands up, his lawyers stand up, they all walk out and it's over. We wait for a little while and then we're released and we rush out of the courtroom and I turn my computer on and I turn my phone on. And it's only then that we get a bunch of information from the DA's office

that tells us a little bit more about the charges and the case, including the statement of facts. And the statement of facts is what tells us that this is all going to be a little more complicated than we realized. We'll be right back. So Jonah, what exactly did we learn from the documents released by the district attorney on Tuesday that has made this case start to feel, as you said, a little more complicated? Well, basically the case is telling multiple stories That is also one big story So the first of those multiple stories Is one that we knew about And that's the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels

That was made by Michael Cohen Before the 2016 election Then after the 2016 election Trump reimbursed Cohen Right And he reimbursed him with a series of payments. Each of those payments and the related documents represents a count. So when you look at the false statements made about those payments, in terms of how they were categorized, in terms of what was

said about them at the Trump organization, that's how you get to the filing false business records charge that is this entire case. There's 34 of those. Right, because the payments are allegedly mischaracterized by Trump and the Trump Organization. The Trump Organization said that these were payments to Michael Cohen for ordinary legal work,

but they were reimbursements for the hush money that Cohen paid out of his own pocket to Stormy Daniels. You're saying there are 34 charges here because there are 34 instances of the Trump organization falsifying business records to cover up those reimbursements. That's exactly right. So that's the part we knew a lot about before this survey. So what else did we learn?

Well, we learned, like I said, that there are multiple stories included in these documents that the prosecutors send out. So one concerns a woman named Karen McDougal. She's a former Playboy model. And she says that she had a month's long affair with Donald Trump. And so Trump and his folks are worried that this story is going to come out during the 2016 election. But this time, they coordinate with a media organization they're close to, the National Enquirer. And it's that organization that pays Karen McDougal.

And they pay her for the exclusive rights to her story. Right, which is known as a catch-and-kill. rights to her story. Right, which is known as a catch and kill. Basically, the National Enquirer gets word that McDougal has this story about an alleged affair with Trump. They offer to pay her for the story. And in so doing, they get her to sell the exclusive rights to the story. So they now have control over it, but they never actually write the story. They never intend to write the story. They are catching it, and they are killing it. Yes, exactly. That's the idea, is to kill the story.

And that's what happens to Karen McDougal's story. And then there's a third story that's also similar. And this story involves a person who worked at Trump Tower as a doorman. And the doorman says he has this story about Trump supposedly fathering a kid out of wedlock. And here again is an instance where the National Enquirer is the one who gets involved. They pay for the story, they kill the story, and the story doesn't appear during the 2016 campaign. And later they determined that the story wasn't even true. And Jonah, how do these two cases that you just described, the Karen McDougal case and the doorman case, how do they

actually fit into the charges that have just been brought against Trump and that were described on Tuesday by the DA? That's such a good question. The truth is, we don't entirely know yet. There's a good chance we won't know for some time here. So the charges, those 34 counts, those relate to the Trump reimbursements to Michael Cohen for the stormy Daniels payment, right? But in order to be a felony, those 34 charges have to include an intent to commit or conceal another crime. And as of now, we don't know what that crime is. And the reason we don't know what it is is because the prosecutors haven't yet said what it is. And so it may be that by including all three of these stories in the story of the overall case, the prosecutors are trying to

present a pattern of behavior that will help them sell that underlying crime to a jury. And one theory of that underlying crime, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it might be a crime involving campaign finance. Because ultimately, the payments that were made to Stormy Daniels in the eyes of many people who know the law may have been illegal campaign donations, correct? That's exactly right. But we really just don't know. Okay, so no matter what this second or underlying crime, however we want to describe it, no matter what that is, the reason that prosecutors have decided to tell all these stories, all three, is because you're saying it will firmly establish a kind of Trump MO, a pattern of behavior that a jury can look at, and they think that makes this a stronger case.

A hundred percent. Prosecutors' job is to tell a persuasive story about Donald Trump. And they can tell a story that just involves Stormy Daniels, but they don't know what a jury is going to make of that. But if they tell a story that involves Stormy Daniels, and then they tell another one that sounds pretty similar that involves Karen McDougal, and they tell a third one that involves a doorman, and in all of those stories, there's this common thread, which is burying a potentially damaging set of facts to help the campaign, that might be a lot more convincing.

Right, because it's not just a common story, it's a common intent. It's a common motivation from Donald Trump. That's exactly, exactly right. Earlier this afternoon, Donald Trump was arraigned on a New York Supreme Court indictment, returned by a Manhattan grand jury. And later on Tuesday, I actually went to a news conference that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, held. The defendant repeatedly made false statements on New York business records. He also caused others to make false statements. And he talked about Trump committing the same illegal acts again and again.

We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law. And why that was unacceptable to him. Thanks so much. Okay, so Jonah, what happens next based on everything that you learned on Tuesday? Where does this case now go? I think we're going to keep seeing this case play out in two very, very different arenas. On the campaign trail, where Trump is a presidential candidate, and in the courtroom, where he's a defendant.

And those are two very different roles. And it'll be really interesting to see whether they're reconcilable roles because the Trump we saw in court today is so different from the Trump we're used to seeing. Well, you mentioned earlier that the judge in this case warned Trump not to run around riling people up about the case. But beyond that, did today's legal proceedings put any real constraints on how Trump can talk about or campaign on the fact that he's been indicted? And does it put any restrictions on his travel or anything else related to his campaign? So we don't quite know yet, but we will know soon. There are going to be limitations on Trump. Those are related to what's called a protective order

that's being drawn up between prosecutors and Mr. Trump's legal team. And that's going to dictate the way that Trump uses what's happening in the courtroom on the campaign trail. Prosecutors don't want him to tweet evidence from the case. They don't want him to disclose things he's not able to disclose. They ask that he not even look at certain material from the case unless he's in his lawyer's office. So we don't know what is going to be in that final agreement, but there is going to be a document

that constrains what Donald Trump can do and what Donald Trump can say. And I'm very curious to see whether he can heed the terms of that document. And what will happen if he does not? If he doesn't, the judge will have to make a decision about how to sanction the former president. For so long, he's conflated his legal problems with political problems, and he's turned

legal problems into politics. And it's one thing to do that when you're under investigation, but it's a whole nother that when you're under investigation, but it's a whole other thing when you're a criminal defendant. Well, Jonah, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. USA! USA! Thank you very much, everybody. And we have to save our country. God bless you all. God bless you all. On Tuesday night, Trump delivered a speech about the arraignment from Mar-a-Lago.

And I never thought anything like this could happen in America. Never thought it could happen. The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it. And despite the warning from prosecutors and the judge in the case, Trump attacked the proceedings and the judge in the case, Trump attacked the proceedings and the judge himself, calling him a, quote, Trump hater. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. In a political earthquake for Wisconsin and national politics, a liberal candidate, Janet Protasewicz, has won a crucial seat on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, flipping majority control away from conservative justices. As a result, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely, over the next year, to reverse the state's ban on abortion and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps

that have given Republicans a lock on power in the state. And... On Tuesday, Finland became NATO's 31st member state, a defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was determined to block NATO's expansion, but instead galvanized Finland, which borders Russia, to join the alliance as a response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. During a ceremony, the Finnish flag was raised at NATO's headquarters, and the alliance's leader pointedly warned Russia that NATO would keep getting stronger.

President Putin wanted to slam NATO's door shut. Today, we show the world that he failed. That aggression and intimidation do not work. Instead of less NATO, he has achieved the opposite, more NATO. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chaturvedi, Rob Zipko, Nina Feldman, and Claire Tennesketter. It was edited by Rachel Quester, Lisa Chow, and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Corey Schreppel, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. Special thanks to Maddie Macielo. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.