Five things to watch when Trump is arraigned

On Tuesday in Miami, former President Trump will be arraigned on criminal charges for the second time this year.

This time, Trump faces 37 counts relating to retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealment and making false statements. 

Those charges are the result of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into documents bearing classified markings that remained in Trump’s possession, primarily at his Florida estate of Mar-a-Lago, after he left the presidency.

In April, Trump was arraigned in Manhattan on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a separate case, relating to payments made to the adult actress Stormy Daniels. 

Tuesday’s arraignment in Miami will be the first time a former president has been charged in federal court.

Here are the key things to watch.

Will there be disorder?

Trump and his allies have reacted with fury to news of his indictment. 

In a video posted to Truth Social after news of the indictment came out last week, Trump contended the case amounted to “warfare” through the legal system. In a Monday post, previewing his trip to Miami for arraignment, he contended that “Communists, Marxists and Radical Left Lunatics” were destroying the United States.

The former president’s most fervent supporters have used even more incendiary rhetoric. 

Defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) said that if people wanted to “get to” Trump then “you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”

Lake added: “That’s not a threat — that’s a public service announcement.”

Lake was also set to address a pro-Trump rally in Palm Beach on Monday evening.

Authorities in Miami have put plans in place for Tuesday, with chief of police Manuel Morales saying at a news conference that the city could “handle crowds anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000.”

It seems highly unlikely the upper figure will come close to being hit. But, whatever size the crowds, the arraignment will clearly take place in a very volatile atmosphere.

What will Trump say?

Trump said barely anything at this New York arraignment in April, restricting himself to just 10 words, according to The Washington Post. 

But by that evening, Trump was back at Mar-a-Lago, complaining before the cameras that Bragg’s action was a “fake case [that] was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.”

Trump looks set to adopt the same strategy in reverse this time around. 

He arrived in Florida on Monday from his Bedminster, N.J., estate, and is expected to return to the Garden State on Tuesday night to deliver his riposte.

Trump can likely use his characteristically belligerent rhetoric without risking a court-imposed gag order. 

Although a magistrate judge will preside over the arraignment, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who ruled in his legal team’s favor during an earlier stage of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, has been assigned the overall case.

Do any big GOP names show up to support him?

The new charges pose a very serious legal threat to Trump, but their political impact — especially in a GOP primary — is much more questionable.

A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday indicated just 8 percent of Republicans felt the case could change their view of the former president for the worse; 12 percent said it could improve their view of Trump; 27 percent said their view would depend on what information emerges; and a clear majority, 53 percent, said it would not change their opinion of him.

Given those dynamics, it would be unsurprising if some of the most pro-Trump GOP officeholders showed up to support him.

What about his Republican presidential rivals?

Trump’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination have been placed in a bind by the new indictment.

On the one hand, most are wary of getting too blatantly at odds with Trump, given his popularity with the party’s grassroots activists and the danger of being seen as siding with his enemies.

At the same time, excessively craven support for Trump risks erasing the kind of meaningful distinctions those candidates have to make if they are to stand any realistic hope of wresting the nomination away from him.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Trump’s most serious rival in the polls, has weighed in against what he terms the Biden administration “weaponizing the power of the state” against its enemies.

But DeSantis also suggested that he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified information while he served in the Navy.

On Monday, another Trump rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, said during a Fox News interview that, if Trump indeed behaved as prosecutors alleged, he had been “incredibly reckless with our national security.”

Whether Haley or anyone else ramps up that criticism Tuesday will be one of the most intriguing elements in the day’s drama.

Do Democrats pile on, or let events speak for themselves?

President Biden has basically declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, cautious to avoid any appearance of seeking to influence the case or, at an earlier stage, nudge prosecutors toward seeking an indictment.

It is near-certain that he will hold fast to that position Tuesday.

Other Democrats may find it too tempting to avoid weighing in on social media or TV interviews, however.

But the risk is that Democratic glee at Trump’s troubles plays into his larger narrative, as he seeks to discredit the charges as politically motivated.