Former President Donald Trump was indicted with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.
What happens next? WTOP spoke to multiple political reporters that broke down what the case could entail.
‘Sad day for the country’
CBS News’ Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett agrees with Trump that Thursday was a “sad day” for America, but for a different reason.
He said the case comes at a time when people are still trying to recover from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“This is the process of a country trying to come to grips with that day, and hold responsible the person who, the special counsel says, was central to setting in motion what happened on January 6, because he made a choice, a choice to fight for power when he was told over and over again, not by opponents, but by people he chose to work for him, that he had lost the election. He defied that advice,” Garrett said.
Trump’s body language in Washington
Scott MacFarlane with CBS was in the courtroom to cover Trump both in Miami during his appearance in federal court in mid-June to face 37 counts related to the mishandling and retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and during his appearance before a magistrate judge in the D.C. federal courthouse.
“You noticed him surveying the scene a little more today, looking at the crowd, making eye contact with people in the crowd,” MacFarlane said. “Among those in the crowd today were three of those officers who responded [on] January 6,” he said.
He said today’s session was delayed by 20 minutes and the judge kept Trump waiting.
“He was getting fidgety in the chair,” MacFarlane said. “I’m not sure when [was] the last time somebody made a former president sit around and wait idly.”
He said that the upcoming presidential race in 2024 plays a big part in the timing of this trial. That means there’s a timeline for the candidates.
“This is so clearly a race against the clock,” MacFarlane said. “It’s not just the biggest criminal prosecution in American history, but it’s obviously not happening in a vacuum. Every court date, every scheduling matter is going to be critical, as the Iowa caucuses are less than six months away and the general election is about a year away.”
Trial timing
Josh Gerstein, a White House reporter for POLITICO, told WTOP that with the three ongoing criminal cases and the 2024 election, there’s a real question of how the timing is going to work out.
He said it’s a matter of logistics.
“Trump is not only a candidate, but appears to be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, so we’ve got a massive job of … traffic copping these three cases, and three potential trials,” Gerstein said. “We even have a fourth trial and just possibly down the road here, if there is a fourth indictment of Trump down in Georgia, as many people expect, also in connection with the 2020 election.”
A ‘very dangerous constitutional path’
CBS News Legal Analyst Thane Rosenbaum said the court system is going down a “dangerous constitutional path” in regards to Trump’s 2020 election indictment charges.
“We’re basically criminalizing false political speech [and] disinformation,” Rosenbaum said.
When it comes to proving the elements of the crimes, Rosenbaum said that it’s a very different path than usual.
“First of all, they have to prove that he knew he was lying, right? Just because everyone told him that he wasn’t [lying], that he didn’t win the election, they’re going to have to prove that he did, because they’re essentially saying … they say he has a right to free speech,” he said. “But once he was told that he lost, he had to give it up. I just think that that’s a very dangerous road, when we’re a very pro-free speech society.”
‘Moving quickly’
Axios Politics Reporter Stef Kight said that when it comes to this third criminal indictment, it seems as if the courts want to move it along quickly.
That’s partly because of the upcoming presidential election in 2024.
“We certainly got a pretty clear indication that the judge plans to move very quickly on this particular case,” Kight said. “Of course, we don’t know when that might be. But we do have those indications that they plan to move quickly, and that the Justice Department would like to move quickly on this one.”
For Trump, Kight said that the presidential election is key to him protecting himself.
“On one hand, one of the surest ways for the former president to avoid any repercussions from any potential convictions would be if he’s in the White House. So, in some cases, he has even more motive to campaign, and he has made it clear that he intends to continue running for president, no matter what, and he at least has a small segment of the population of Republicans who are willing to defend him and vote for him no matter what.”