Trump pleads not guilty to felony charges

Donald Trump on Tuesday became the first former US president to be arraigned on federal criminal charges, a matter Trump called "election interference" as he campaigns to win back the presidency in the November 2024 election.

Trump's lawyer pleaded not guilty for him in a downtown Miami courthouse to illegally keeping national security documents after leaving office, obstructing efforts to retrieve them and making false statements about the matter.

The history-making court date centered on charges that Trump mishandled government secrets that as commander-in-chief he was entrusted to protect, kick-started a legal process that will unfold at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign and carry profound consequences not only for his political future but also for his personal liberty, The Associated Press reported.

Trump arrived at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. courthouse in Florida in a motorcade of four black SUVs shortly before 2 pm for the 3 pm scheduled hearing.

Inside his motorcade, Trump posted social media broadsides against the prosecution insisting he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes.

Outside the courthouse, there were hundreds of supporters and anti-Trump protesters along with hundreds of journalists from around the world. Small groups of supporters and anti-Trump protesters occasionally exchanged obscenities.

After the hearing, Trump flew to New Jersey, where he delivered remarks at his golf club in Bedminster on Tuesday night.

"This is called election interference. … This day will go down in infamy, and Joe Biden will be forever 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… tried to destroy American democracy.

"Never before have the two standards of justice in this country been more starkly revealed," Trump said, in mentioning Biden's own possession of classified documents when he was vice-president. In freewheeling remarks, Trump also brought up incidents involving classified information related to former president Bill Clinton and later his wife, Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state and the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.

He also bristled at the prosecution's use of the Espionage Act, which he said has been used to "go after traders and spies".

The White House has dodged questions about the matter.

"I'm just not going to comment on anything that's related to the indictment," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

"I have no comment on what happened," Biden told reporters on Friday while in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Asked Friday whether he had spoken to Attorney General Merrick Garland about the case, Biden replied curtly. "I have not spoken to him at all," he told reporters. "I'm not going to speak to him."

Trump faces 37 counts on seven different charges, including willful retention of national defense information, withholding a record, false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. All relate to his handling of documents at his Mara-Lago resort.

Revealing evidence

With the not-guilty plea entered, the government will begin to reveal its evidence through the discovery process. Pretrial motions will be filed and argued. All of that will likely take months.

The trial on the indictment charges will be overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has issued favorable rulings to Trump in the past and was randomly assigned to the case.

Trump, who has a big lead in polls for the 2024 GOP presidential primary, faces other legal trouble. Tuesday was the second time that he has been criminally charged since March when he was indicted in New York City on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment.

Meanwhile, Representative Lauren Boebert announced on Tuesday articles of impeachment against Biden over the crisis at the southern border, The Washington Times reported. The Republican introduced two articles of impeachment, accusing Biden of abuse of power and dereliction of duty for facilitating the largest surge of illegal immigrants in US history.

Agencies contributed to this story.