Former President Donald Trump is slated to get arraigned around 4 p.m. Eastern Thursday in a courtroom in Washington, D.C., with the hearing coming after his four-count indictment on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, the frontrunner in polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has denied wrongdoing and is expected to enter pleas of not guilty, the same plea he entered earlier this year in a Manhattan case over hush-money payments and in a Miami case over classified documents.
Related: Judge assigned to Trump’s Jan. 6 case is a tough punisher of Capitol rioters
The former president’s 2024 campaign has made efforts to raise money off the latest indictment, such as by offering supporters an “I Stand With Trump” T-shirt with Tuesday’s date in exchange for a $47 donation. Disclosures filed Monday covering this year’s first six months show that his fundraising jumped after his Manhattan indictment and then saw another spike that was smaller after his Miami indictment, as indicated in the tweet below.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that a quarter of Republican voters either believe Trump acted criminally or said they are not sure. But having reservations on that front does not seem to be driving them to reconsider their support for him.
Related: Trump’s PAC has spent $40 million on legal fees so far this year
Trump lawyer opposes speedy trial
Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday said his office “will seek a speedy trial” in the Jan. 6 case, but Trump defense attorney John Lauro on Wednesday seemed to advocate for holding the trial after the 2024 presidential election.
“The Biden Justice Department has had three years to investigate this. To take President Trump to trial in 90 days, of course, is absurd,” Lauro told NBC’s “Today” show, where he also said, “Why don’t we make it equal?”
The former president faces exposure to another prospective indictment the coming days or weeks. A prosecutor in Georgia’s Fulton County said over the weekend that she will announce charging decisions by Sept. 1 in her investigation into efforts to overturn that state’s results in the 2020 presidential election.
U.S. stocks
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lost ground Wednesday as traders were rattled by a lowering of the U.S. government’s credit rating late Tuesday by Fitch Ratings, which cited in part a “deterioration of governance.” In talks with the U.S. Treasury Department ahead of the downgrade, the ratings agency highlighted the Jan. 6 insurrection as evidence of that deterioration, according to a Reuters report.
Now read: ‘You’re too honest’: Donald Trump’s alleged Jan. 6 conspiracies, explained
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