Donald Trump has arrived at the Washington, D.C., courthouse where he will be arrested and arraigned today on charges related to a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. See some images from the scene below.
The atmosphere outside has the feel of Hollywood Boulevard: vendors selling T-shirts, a Trump impersonator hoping to strike gold and competing speakers with amplifiers claiming that the former president either deserves to be in jail or that he really won the election over Joe Biden.
The crowd outside thinned a bit once the arraignment started, and someone cranked their music up to play Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”
There still were occasional arguments between Trump supporters and opponents. It was difficult to discern if one exchange — in which two speakers battled over January 6, Covid and Elon Musk — was real or merely performance art.
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Spotted in the crowd were Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, aka The Good Liars, who said that they have been to all three indictments so far.
“It is a circus like all the other ones, but I would say it is smaller than the other two indictments,” Selvig said after interviewing a Trump supporter dressed in a tricorn hat and colonial attire.
“Maybe the Trump supporters are losing interest in it — I am not sure,” he added. “There are maybe 30 Trump supporters here.”
“It’s a little bit of Groundhog Day all over again,” Steifler said. “We’re seeing these indictments come one after the other, and they are all starting to feel the same. This one is a little calmer than the others, for whatever reason. Maybe people are staying away because they think the FBI is going to frame them.”
The media presence outside the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, just blocks from the Capitol, was certainly the largest in recent memory. Satellite trucks lined the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue, providing a bit of a shield from the carnival atmosphere as reporters did their stand ups. The building complex itself was surrounded by yellow police tape, and snowplows blocked some streets for extra security. Along C Street, spectators gathered to try to catch a glimpse of Trump’s motorcade as it came to the side entrance, but it was merely a fleeting moment.
Dion Cini said he also has been to all three arraignments. “Why wouldn’t I want to witness history firsthand If I knew 9/11 was going to happen on 9/10, I would have been in New York to see it happen. Because that is exactly what is happening right now. The Civil War. I want to see that. This is a travesty what is going on today.”
Cini was holding a large Trump flag, but he said that he’s made even larger ones. “This one’s a little guy. It’s about 18 feet long.”
“Trump said a few years ago that if I shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, people would still vote for me,” he said. “And I agree with that. So this pales in comparison to that. So I love Donald Trump as a man, as a leader and as president.”
Holding a sign that read, “Lock the traitor up!,” Eric Lamar of Washington, D.C., said, “I think this is a moment to celebrate the American justice system — the fact that Donald Trump. who is a former president and a current criminal. is going to face justice really for the first time in the form of a magistrate judge reading out the charges that a grand jury has proffered against him.“
Like many of the most visible demonstrators, Lamar got into occasional verbal tiffs, telling a Trump supporter that their loyalty to the former president was like cult. At one point a Trump supporter responded only by yelling into a amplified microphone. There was no signs of physical confrontations.
Jason Scoop, a standup comedian, drew crowds around him as he imitated Trump, often pulling in passersby for his material. This, too, was his third arraignment, as he had shown up in New York in April and Florida in June, ready to entertain in his blonde wig.
“I’ve done comedy for 10 years. I’ve done impersonations since third grade. But everything really took off for me after indictment number one,” he said.
How does this compare? “I don’t know much about D.C. but this pales in comparison. I mean the first one, you had antifa fighting with the MAGA hats and then someone on a unicycle comes by and breaks it up. I was crazy. It was like a mushroom trip. And then the second one was Miami and a lot hotter. Even the building — you look at the first one and it was a typical courthouse. The Miami one was like a turquoise blue, all glass building. It was more of a whatever party atmosphere. And then this is Washington, D.C. It’s like, whatever.”
Here are some more photos from outside the courthouse:
Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
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