In just the last year, Donald Trump has been arraigned three times.
He is the only former US president in history to face criminal charges.
On Thursday, in a Washington federal courtroom just blocks from the Capitol where a mob of his supporters rioted on January 6th, Trump pled not guilty to one count of obstruction and three counts of conspiracy in a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The former president waived his right to appear at the arraignment.
Back in March, he denied his guilt over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and woman he allegedly had an affair with, and in June he also denied guilt in the illegal hoarding of classified documents at his Florida resort residence.
In the updated classified documents indictment, prosecutors are alleging that two employees of Donald Trump, Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta, made an attempt to delete security footage at his Florida resort after the Justice Department had issued a subpoena in an attempt to obtain the documents.
In the indictment, De Oliveira claims he told the director of IT at Mar-A-Lago “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted.”
Trump, who was facing 37 criminal charges, was then charged with an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional counts of obstruction.
After his court appearance on Thursday, August 3rd, the former president said to reporters, “When you look at what’s happening, this is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. So, if you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him. We can’t let this happen in America.”