Donald Trump has been formally charged with 34 felonies in an indictment unsealed Tuesday. After surrendering to authorities at a New York courthouse, Trump was placed under arrest and fingerprinted. He then appeared in a courtroom, where he pled not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments he paid out during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump is the first U.S. president ever to be charged with a crime, also the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. This all comes as Trump is running for president again, while he’s facing several other major criminal investigations.
I think the charges, in and of themselves, are significant. And what makes it especially interesting is that each of the 34 counts is grounded in a piece of evidence, whether an invoice or a check or an entry in a ledger. So none of these charges stand alone requiring just the testimony of a witness. The documents, the ledgers, the checks speak for themselves, and they can’t be cross-examined.
— source democracynow.org | Apr 05, 2023