Former U.S. President Donald Trump was placed under arrest shortly after arriving at a heavily fortified Miami courthouse on Tuesday afternoon to face his first federal indictment.
Trump flew to Miami from his New Jersey golf club on Monday afternoon, then was driven to the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse from his golf club in Doral, a 12-mile drive across town, on Tuesday to face 37 counts related to his alleged willful mishandling of classified documents.
Trump’s motorcade pulled up to the courthouse shortly before 2 p.m., entering through an entrance fortified by heavy security. Once the vehicles were cleared for entry by police, they headed to an underground garage.
Trump and his co-defendant, former Diet Coke valet-turned-personal aide Walt Nauta, were booked by the U.S. Marshals Service by 2:15 p.m. Nauta is accused of moving boxes of documents around Mar-a-Lago after a subpoena was issued for the return of all classified materials, then lying to investigators.
Trump was not expected to be handcuffed or made to empty his pockets, according to sources cited by ABC News. He also was not expected to have his mugshot taken, with authorities using a “previously taken photo” instead, CBS News reported. He was likely to be electronically fingerprinted in an underground garage out of the public view, Miami Herald federal court reporter Jay Weaver told NPR. When Trump faced an indictment on state charges in New York in April, he was not photographed.
Trump is accused of, among other offenses, violating the Espionage Act by refusing to hand over national security secrets he took to his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office. Documents were stashed in storage rooms, a bathroom, Trump’s bedroom, and a ballroom accessible by visitors and staff, the feds say. After a subpoena was issued for the return of any classified material, Trump suggested his lawyers ignore it or just say “we don’t have anything here,” the indictment alleges.
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The former president had called on supporters to protest outside the courthouse on Tuesday, and authorities were on standby in case any of the pro-Trump rallies, including one purportedly organized by a local chapter of the Proud Boys, turned ugly. However, the turnout was lower than Trump had apparently hoped, having claimed to be expecting some 50,000 people on hand.
Among the few hundred Trump loyalists outside the courthouse, Osmany Estrada, 40, stood draped in a Cuban and American flag with a pig’s head on a pike. He told The Daily Beast the severed head didn’t represent anything specific, but that he was simply making a “bold” statement.
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