Trump’s rambling Mar-a-Lago speech post-perp walk — and the roads that led us here

Former US president Donald Trump has addressed supporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida hours after he became the first former president in the nation’s history to be arraigned on criminal charges. 

He told the hundreds in attendance, including two of his children, Eric and Tiffany, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, that the charges he faced were an “insult” to the country, and the judge in his case was a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family”.

The New York Times dedicated five reporters, including Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, to analyse and debunk Trump’s claims in real time. Swan noted Trump’s team was “almost giddy” about the widespread cable news coverage, but meanwhile, as media correspondent Michael M Grynbaum observed, “none of the broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — are breaking into their regular primetime shows to air Trump’s speech”.

Shortly after Trump’s arraignment, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg told reporters the charges against the former president were felony crimes “no matter who you are”.

So how did we get here? Crikey looks back at an unprecedented day in US political history, and at all the roads that led us here (and quite a few that should have).

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May 2017: Trump sacks the head of the FBI, James Comey. The move is so unexpected that news of the sacking appears on TV screens behind Comey while he is giving a speech. Comey and the FBI had been investigating links between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government. Indeed, the sacking comes only days after Comey had asked then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions to provide additional resources to pursue the investigation. It is further alleged that Trump had asked Comey to “let go” the earlier investigation into Russian influence on the US election.

Also in May, former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as a special counsel to oversee a probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to associates of Trump.

July 2017: It’s revealed that in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr received an email offering to set up a meeting with a “Kremlin-backed” lawyer who was offering to provide the campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr’s response: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

He, along with then-campaign director Paul Manafort and adviser Jared Kushner, met briefly with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and say they found that her claims were without substance. And we know all this because, in the bewildered words of a reporter who claimed to have worked on the story for a year, “he just … he tweeted it out“.

August 2018: Manafort is found guilty on eight counts of fraud-related crimes and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen takes a plea deal over multiple matters, including the payoff to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. The pair are two of 18 Trump-adjacent figures who would go on to be charged or imprisoned.

January 5 and 6 2021: The day before Joe Biden is to be confirmed at the next US president, Trump addresses a rally in Georgia. He says he won the election in a landslide and openly calls on then-vice-president Mike Pence to reject the outcome of the election — a power Pence doesn’t have. The next day, speaking at another rally in Washington, Trump declares:

We will never give up, we will never concede. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more. We will stop the steal.

After the rally, a section of the crowd storms and eventually breaches the US Capitol.

April 4 2023, 1.09pm: Trump leaves Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, New York. His car makes the 15-minute drive between Fifth and the court precinct in Lower Manhattan, where waiting for him are hundreds of supporters, reporters, and the first criminal charges ever face by a former US president. Many reporters had been lining up since the previous day. His supporters include Republican politicians Taylor Greene and George Santos. Greene is the first advocate of the QAnon conspiracy theory to make it into the House of Representatives in the US. Santos’ prolific, demonstrable lies — in only the most egregious example, he has falsely claimed to be Jewish and descended from holocaust victims, founding an animal charity and much much more — since coming into public life have become so blatant as to be a running joke. The pair make ideal representatives of the Republican Party that gave us Trump and the Republican Party that Trump gave us.

Trump is escorted to Bragg’s office in one of the biggest security operations the city has ever seen. Trump, as predicted, is not subject to the handcuffing and mugshot that would usually take place before a court appearance. Experts say the decision not to do so is equal parts deference to Trump’s status as a former president, and an attempt to prevent Trump the iconography this would provide his upcoming 2024 bid.

In the days leading up to the arraignment, Trump’s team mocks up a mugshot and puts it on a T-shirt to raise campaign funds. Trump has said that since news of his indictment broke, his campaign has raised more than US$10 million.

Trump may be facing up to three more criminal charges, all more serious than this one. This indictment stems from the $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Bragg alleges there are 34 false business statements that Trump made to cover up other crimes.

Trump entered a not guilty plea to all 34 charges. The judge warned the parties to refrain from making public statements that could incite violence.

Trump then left the court and flew to Florida.