Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Plotting to Overturn the 2020 Election

It was the third time in four months he stood before a judge on criminal charges. But it was the most momentous, the beginning of what prosecutors say should be a reckoning for his multipronged efforts to undermine one of the core tenets of democracy.

Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, who oversaw the roughly half-hour hearing, ordered Mr. Trump not to communicate about the case with any witnesses except through counsel or in the presence of counsel. She set the date for the first hearing before the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, for Aug. 28.

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, John F. Lauro, complained to Judge Upadhyaya that the government had had years to investigate the matter and he and his colleagues were going to need time to fairly defend their client. She directed him to bring it up with the trial judge, and for prosecutors to respond within five days of his filing.

The same courthouse where Mr. Trump appeared before to face the charges brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has already hosted a stream of trials for Trump supporters accused of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Security is heavy around the courthouse, with officers on foot and on horseback and barricades erected on the sidewalk. The crowd — made up of Mr. Trump’s critics and his supporters — clogged the area outside the courthouse, with some carrying pro-Trump signs and others shouting anti-Trump slogans, including “Lock him up!”

Here’s what to know:

• Mr. Trump’s appearance came about six weeks after his arraignment in Miami on federal charges of mishandling government documents after he left the White House and seeking to block investigators. As in that case, he did not have a mug shot taken.

• The hearing before Judge Upadhyaya, who was appointed to the bench last year, lived up to the expectations that it would be relatively straightforward. Mr. Trump entered his plea of not guilty and the government presented its conditions for his release. As in the Florida case, prosecutors requested no bail and no restrictions on his travel.

• Three members of Mr. Smith’s small team of veteran prosecutors will be at the forefront of the election case. Mr. Trump’s legal team has added a new member specifically for this latest indictment.

• Mr. Trump is already under indictment in two other cases. He is charged with 40 counts in the documents case and 34 felony counts in a New York State case in the spring in connection with a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election. Mr. Trump could face a fourth criminal case before the month is over: The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is also investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election. Track the investigations here.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:44 p.m. ET

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Lauro says the government has had years to investigate the matter, and the defense lawyers are going to need a little time to fairly represent their client.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:40 p.m. ET

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And let’s not forget that Trump might be indicted in Georgia later this month as well.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:41 p.m. ET

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The legal calendar has become intertwined with the political calendar in a way that could prove challenging for Trump, although he is currently leading the Republican primary field by some 30 points.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:39 p.m. ET

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Lauro requests that the government be required to give the defense, within two or three days, an understanding of the scope of discovery.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:40 p.m. ET

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Windom says the government is prepared, as soon as a protective order is issued, to produce a substantive volume of discovery, including discovery it is not yet required to turn over. As a general matter, he says, this case — like any other — would benefit from normal order, including a speedy trial.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:34 p.m. ET

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The first two dates are just before the first Republican primary debate, Aug. 23, which Trump has not yet said if he is attending.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:32 p.m. ET

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It’s also no surprise that prosecutors did not require Trump to surrender his passport or attach any other serious condition to his release. The same thing happened in the Florida case.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:28 p.m. ET

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:28 p.m. ET

Lauro says this accurately states the defense’s understanding of the conditions of release.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:28 p.m. ET

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The order imposed on Trump not to communicate with any witnesses in the case is the same one imposed on him in the documents case.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:21 p.m. ET

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The question about a defendant using drugs is standard operating procedure and not specific to Trump.

“It’s going to be hard to square with the Constitution,” said Elizabeth Earle Beske, an associate law professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

Several scholars and lawyers noted that the Constitution says that trials “shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed.” The federal rules of criminal procedure further specify that the proceedings be held in the district of the alleged offense.

Defendants can already seek a change of venue for their cases under the current law, the experts pointed out, but the bar is high: They must demonstrate to the court that they cannot otherwise obtain a fair and impartial trial.

Mr. DeSantis, in echoing Mr. Trump’s “swamp” pejorative for Washington, seemed to suggest that his rival could not get a fair trial in the nation’s capital. Bryan Griffin, a campaign spokesman for Mr. DeSantis who went to Harvard Law School and previously practiced law, said in an email that the governor’s idea for moving cases had merit.

“Congress can certainly change the rules of criminal procedure to allow defendants to change venues out of D.C. for politically charged cases,” he said.

But that premise was challenged by David B. Rivkin Jr., who served in the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and practices appellate and constitutional law in Washington.

“I think it’s extremely unfortunate to characterize the D.C. jury pool in this fashion,” he said. “Whatever you think about the U.S. government, the notion that means that people who live in the district can be accused of being part of the swamp, to me, is neither fair nor appropriate.”

Arthur Hellman, a law professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that Mr. DeSantis had “not thought that through completely.”

“Criminal venue was so important to the framers,” of the Constitution, he said.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:19 p.m. ET

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Generally, an F.B.I. agent who appears with prosecutors in the courtroom is the case agent on the investigation. We will see if that’s the case with Agent Garner.

Aug. 3, 2023, 4:15 p.m. ET

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A reporter tries to come up with yet another descriptive way to convey that nothing is happening yet.

Conspiracy to violate rights is Section 241 of Title 18, the portion of the United States Code that concerns federal criminal offenses. A conviction on this charge is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Congress enacted what is now Section 241 after the Civil War to go after white Americans in the South, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, who used terrorism to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from voting. But in a series of cases in the 20th century, the Supreme Court upheld an expanded use of the statute to election-fraud conspiracies, like ballot-box stuffing.

In invoking the statute, the indictment frames Mr. Trump’s conduct as “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

Essentially, Mr. Smith accused Mr. Trump of trying to rig the outcome of the election.

“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted and certified,” the indictment said.

The indictment cites five means by which Mr. Trump and six unnamed co-conspirators sought to reverse the results of the election, including pushing state legislators and election officials to award electoral votes won by his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., to him instead.

“On the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the defendant,” the indictment said.

The indictment said that involved the recruitment of fake electors in swing states Mr. Biden won, trying to wield the power of the Justice Department to fuel lies about election conspiracy, and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the election or reject legitimate electors.

And when all that failed, the indictment said, Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators “exploited” the violent disruption of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, by “redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.”

The indictment, which recounts each of those episodes in detail, relies on the same basic facts for the other counts against Mr. Trump.

Conspiracy to defraud the United States involves Section 371. Any conviction on this charge is also punishable by up to five years in prison.

This charge has long been seen as a possible result of the investigation. In March 2022, for example, a federal judge ruled that emails belonging to John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump in his efforts to remain in power, qualified for an exemption from attorney-client privilege because they most likely involved a Section 371 offense.

And the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 recommended in its final report in December 2022 that the Justice Department charge Mr. Trump and others with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Both of the closely related third and fourth counts are provisions of Section 1512. Any conviction under that statute is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors have used this law to charge hundreds of people who participated in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, accusing them of obstructing the joint session of Congress to certify Mr. Biden’s victory.

In April, a federal appeals court upheld the viability of applying that charge in relation to the Capitol attack. But using it against Mr. Trump may raise different issues, because he did not personally participate in the riot.

Mr. Trump currently faces three criminal cases: The federal case brought in Washington this week by the special counsel, Jack Smith; a separate federal case brought by Mr. Smith in Florida accusing Mr. Trump of mishandling national security secrets; and a case in New York State Court accusing him of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn star.

Were Mr. Trump to be elected again and a federal case still be pending on Inauguration Day, he could simply use his power as president to force the Justice Department to drop the matter, as he has suggested he might do.

(It is not yet clear when a trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election will start. The classified documents case has a trial date set for May, although that could be pushed back.)

The Constitution does not give presidents supervisory authority over state prosecutors, so Mr. Trump would not be able to simply call off the case in New York, which is scheduled for trial in March. Nor would that approach work for a potential case in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has indicated she is nearing a decision on charges in her own election-interference investigation.

But Mr. Trump could essentially try to hit pause on any state charges. In the past, the Justice Department has taken the position that a criminal legal proceeding against a president while he is in office would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with his ability to perform his duties.

There is, however, no definitive Supreme Court ruling on the matter because the issue has never arisen before. In 1997, the Court allowed a federal lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office — but that was a civil case, not a criminal one.

Things would get even more complicated if Mr. Trump were to be convicted in one or more cases and still win the 2024 election.

For a conviction in a federal case, he would most likely move to pardon himself, a power Mr. Trump claimed in 2018 that he had the “absolute right” to wield.

It is not clear whether a self-pardon would be legitimate. But no text in the Constitution bars a president from doing so, and the issue has never been tested in court.

In 1974, the Justice Department did issue a terse legal opinion stating that President Richard Nixon did not appear to have the authority to pardon himself “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.”

But the opinion did not explain what transformed that principle into an unwritten limit on the power the Constitution bestows on presidents, and legal experts have disagreed on that question.

And Mr. Trump would almost certainly use his control of the Justice Department to ensure that it reverses its position.

If the Justice Department opted not to challenge a self-pardon, it is not clear who else would have legal standing to pursue the matter.

Again, a state case would be different. A self-pardon is not an option because the Constitution does not empower a president to forgive state offenses; that is a power wielded by governors.

If Mr. Trump were unable to secure a governor’s pardon, he could seek a federal court order delaying any incarceration — or requiring his release from prison — while he is the sitting president, on constitutional grounds.

Yet another possibility: If Mr. Trump were incarcerated upon the start of his second term, he could be removed from office under the 25th Amendment as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

That section of the 25th Amendment requires the vice president and a majority of the president’s cabinet to determine he is unable to serve.

Among the questions that possibility would raise is who qualifies as a cabinet member if the Senate has not confirmed any new political appointees by Mr. Trump. But perhaps as important, it would also require Mr. Trump’s running mate — a person who would have agreed to join the campaign of a candidate facing multiple indictments — to sign off on his removal from power.

He is joining Mr. Trump’s defense team strictly to focus on the indictment stemming from Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after the 2020 election, aides said. But he brings deep experience with white-collar criminal cases and a measured and unflappable nature, according to people who have worked with him.

Christopher M. Kise — a member of the Trump legal team who has worked with Mr. Lauro before — described him as a “tenacious lawyer with an eye for critical details and masterful at cross-examination.” Mr. Kise, who is working on other cases, said the Trump team was “privileged to have him.”

Among Mr. Lauro’s highest-profile cases was a 2007 defense of Tim Donaghy, a former N.B.A. referee who pleaded guilty to betting on games and taking payoffs from gamblers.

Mr. Blanche is representing Mr. Trump in the two other cases in which he has been indicted: the state case in Manhattan related to hush money payments to a porn star during the 2016 race, and the federal indictment in Miami accusing Mr. Trump of retaining reams of national defense information after his presidency and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve the material.

Mr. Blanche, who went to law school while working as a paralegal in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and then served as a prosecutor there for nine years, has also represented other high-profile clients. They include Igor Fruman, a former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, who worked for Mr. Trump during the 2020 election. Mr. Fruman pleaded guilty in a campaign finance case and was connected to Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to find “dirt” against President Biden and his son Hunter.

Mr. Blanche also represented Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, in a successful fight to get a New York case against him dismissed. Mr. Manafort had also been charged federally, and his lawyers argued that it was essentially double jeopardy to charge him at the state level, too. Mr. Manafort is among those who recommended Mr. Blanche to Mr. Trump, a person close to the former president said.

Mr. Kise, who is working with Mr. Blanche on the federal documents case, said he has been “honored” to work with him and that he has “an exceptional legal mind and a compelling courtroom presence.”

A central player has been Thomas P. Windom, a veteran prosecutor known for a successful case against members of a white supremacist cell in Maryland. He was quietly brought on in late 2021 — nearly a year before Mr. Smith’s appointment — when it was clear the inquiry would inevitably lead to Mr. Trump.

Working under the close supervision of aides to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, Mr. Windom began to methodically seek information about the roles played by some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, with a mandate to go as high up the chain of command as the evidence warranted.

He continued in that role after Mr. Smith’s appointment and has become a familiar figure at a federal courthouse that has been the venue for dozens of cases concerning the Capitol riot, including Mr. Trump’s. (A little too familiar to some: Last month, a federal judge hauled Mr. Windom out of a Trump-related proceeding, upset that he had prevented a lawyer representing a witness in front of a grand jury from appearing in his courtroom.)

Another key player — and someone Mr. Smith knew from his days as chief of the department’s public corruption unit — is J.P. Cooney, a veteran of the public corruption division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

Mr. Cooney, in particular, is known for his aggressive approach. He unsuccessfully prosecuted two Democrats — Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel during the Obama administration — and investigated Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director, whom Mr. Trump vilified for the bureau’s investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. (Mr. McCabe was never prosecuted.)

In early 2021, Mr. Cooney pressed federal law enforcement officials to turn their attention to people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including his flamboyant political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., according to The Washington Post. He would eventually work on the successful prosecutions of Mr. Stone and another Trump adviser, Stephen K. Bannon.

He joined Mr. Windom’s team in mid-2022, then moved into Mr. Smith’s office late last year.

The assistant U.S. attorney in federal court on Tuesday, when a grand jury handed up a four-count indictment against Mr. Trump, was Molly Gaston, who has worked closely with Mr. Cooney on the Stone and McCabe cases.

But Mr. Trump’s stunning pileup of criminal indictments and civil cases has ensured that the outcomes of the trials may have more bearing on the 2024 election results than the agitprop of American politics: the rallies, advertising blitzes, dueling party conventions and presidential debates.

Mr. Trump’s open deliberation about skipping the first primary debate, a pillar of American campaigns, is perhaps the first bit of evidence.

“This day is all the more tragic and regrettable because the former president has cynically chosen to inflict this embarrassing spectacle on the nation — and a spectacle it will be,” J. Michael Luttig wrote, a retired conservative appeals court judge, wrote after Mr. Trump’s most recent indictment. He added, “For the first time in history, an American president will be on criminal trial in multiple venues — federal and state — during a presidential campaign in which he will be the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.”

At this point, it is getting harder to see how the other contenders for the Republican nomination can dislodge Mr. Trump from the lead. Seventeen percent of voters who prefer him over Mr. Biden think either that he has committed serious federal crimes or that he threatened democracy with his actions after the 2020 election, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.

A far larger 71 percent of Republicans say the former president has not committed serious crimes, the same percentage who say Republicans need to stand behind Mr. Trump through his legal trials.

“I hate to use his words, because I do think he’s kind of silly sometimes, but it is a witch hunt,” said Lynette Dashner, 54, of Concord, Calif. “The Democratic Party has been going after Donald Trump since the get go.”

The Biden campaign has promised the president will campaign for re-election, making no mention of Mr. Trump’s legal trials and travails. That may be so, but will people be listening amid the Trump-centered barrage? After Thursday’s arraignment will come the countdown to another possible indictment in the coming weeks from a grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., considering charges that would stem from Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in that state.

A civil fraud trial brought by Attorney General Letitia James of New York is expected to begin in October. A second defamation suit against Mr. Trump, brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who already secured Mr. Trump’s liability for sexually assaulting her, is set to begin Jan. 15.

A six-year-old federal lawsuit accusing Mr. Trump and his family of promoting a pyramid scheme is set for trial Jan. 29. The felony case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, connected to hush money paid to a pornographic film actress just before the 2016 election, is set for trial March 25.

Two months later — and less than two months before the Republican convention in Milwaukee — Mr. Trump is set to stand trial in Florida on federal charges that he mishandled highly classified national security documents, then obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

His trial date for the charges surrounding efforts to cling to power after his election loss has not been set.

Judge Upadhyaya was appointed last year, and has handled proceedings for several Jan. 6 defendants at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington.

Before being appointed to the bench, she was a complex commercial litigation lawyer and a law clerk for judges on the United States District Court in Washington and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The law firm where she eventually became a partner, Venable L.L.P., described her experience with the federal and state court systems as “second to none.”

Judge Upadhyaya was born in Gujarat, India, and raised in Missouri before she attended American University’s Washington College of Law. Her biography on the Federal District Court’s website includes an audio clip demonstrating the correct pronunciation of her name.

She donated at least $2,550 to political candidates, all Democrats, in the decade before her judicial appointment, according to OpenSecrets.

Like last time, they will not take his picture, according to a law enforcement official involved in the planning. But federal rules dictate that an accused person be reprocessed in each jurisdiction in which he or she faces charges, so Mr. Trump will have to be fingerprinted for a second time using an electronic scanning device. He is also expected to answer a series of intake questions that include personal details, such as his age.

Mr. Trump also did not have a mug shot taken when he was arraigned earlier this year in New York on state charges in connection with a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress before the 2016 election. But his campaign did immediately start selling shirts with a pretend booking photo.

A genuine booking photo could still be in Mr. Trump’s future. The sheriff in Fulton County, Ga., where another potential indictment connected to Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election looms, has suggested that if Mr. Trump is charged, he will be processed like anybody else, mug shot and all.

Mr. Trump appears to be looking to capitalize on his third indictment, which was announced on Tuesday. By Wednesday, he had already sent out emails urging supporters to stand with him by making contributions and purchasing merchandise.

A quarter of Mr. Trump’s online fund-raising this year occurred in the weeks around his first indictment. Contributions around the second indictment were not nearly as substantial, and it remains to be seen whether donors stick with Mr. Trump as his legal troubles have multiplied.

After he arrives at the courthouse, Mr. Trump will be booked and fingerprinted, all part of the behind-the-scenes process of being a criminal defendant at the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse, the venue for dozens of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Once in court, Mr. Trump will hear the charges against him, which center on his effort to overturn the 2020 election results. Moxila A. Upadhyaya, the federal magistrate judge overseeing the arraignment, will then ask for his plea. Mr. Trump, or one of the lawyers acting on his behalf, will almost certainly respond “not guilty.”

Judge Upadhyaya, who will soon hand off the case to a trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, will also probably ask prosecutors to present any conditions for Mr. Trump’s release. The prosecutors — working for the special counsel, Jack Smith — might attach few if any strings. When Mr. Trump was indicted in June, accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s investigation, Mr. Smith requested no bail and no restrictions on Mr. Trump’s travel, reflecting his status as the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

At some arraignments, judges set a preliminary calendar for the case. The schedule could have far-reaching implications, with Mr. Trump already facing two other criminal trials next year, in the thick of the 2024 race. (In addition to the documents case, the Manhattan district attorney brought charges against Mr. Trump in March, accusing him of trying to cover up a potential sex scandal with a porn star before the 2016 election.)

But because the magistrate judge, not Judge Chutkan, is presiding over the arraignment, those more consequential matters will probably have to wait.

Although arraignments are typically low-key proceedings, nothing about Mr. Trump and his legal woes is ever fully devoid of drama. It remains unclear whether any of his lawyers or advisers, who have been publicly attacking the indictment the last two days, will air their grievances at the arraignment or save their concerns for Judge Chutkan’s courtroom.

If the proceeding goes as planned, it should conclude around 5 p.m., at which point Mr. Trump is expected to return to his private jet, which will take him back to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

In April, Mr. Trump was indicted in New York state court in Manhattan on 34 felony counts related to his role in what prosecutors described as a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal in order to clear his path to the presidency in 2016.

A Georgia prosecutor is also in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.