SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records at a New York courthouse.
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Trump has become the first former president to plead to criminal charges.
When he arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday afternoon, Trump waved to supporters before entering the building where he was informed he was under arrest and fingerprinted.
"Heading to Lower Manhattan, the Courthouse. Seems so SURREAL — WOW, they are going to ARREST ME. Can't believe this is happening in America. MAGA!" he wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree for his alleged role in a 2016 hush-money payment to a porn star.
The indictment has been unsealed, read below:
"It's really a historic day and not necessarily in a good way," said Joseph Moreno, legal analyst and former prosecutor with the Department of Justice. "We have not had a president or former president charged criminally and so we are in very much different territory than we ever expected to be in. Most of us thought that if this sort of thing ever happened, it would be at the federal level through some kind of a special council or independent council process that we've seen in the past, not at the local level."
Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal, Chair and Lead Researcher of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, told KCBS Radio's "State of California" what could be on the horizon for the former president if a judge places a gag order on the proceedings, which would restrict Trump from making information about the case public.
"For him to respond appropriately to a gag order would be remarkably out of character," he said.
Moving forward, Rosenthal doesn't expect to hear condemnation from members of the Republican Party. "No one in the party wants to be the next Liz Cheney," he said. "Liz Cheney became persona non grata."
A violent scene evocative of January 6 is possible — as of Tuesday morning, a crowd had already formed around the courthouse — but Rosenthal said circumstances have changed, making a repeat unlikely.
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