‘We’ve Had Some Sensational Cases’: Trump’s Case Will Be Historic, Even By Miami Standards

Outside the sleek glass-and-steel Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse in downtown Miami, Monday morning was in some ways just another weekday for a gritty neighborhood in transition: After a brief shower, the resident roosters crowed loudly. A stray cat perched on a security wall licked her coat. The noise and dust of high-rise construction emanated from the multiple sites of new apartment and condominium developments all around.

But in other respects, it was clearly no ho-hum Monday.

One day before ex-President Donald J. Trump was scheduled to make an initial appearance at the federal building following his criminal indictment last week on federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents, the buildup to an event of historical import with no obvious parallel anywhere — not even in Miami, site of many a clamorous legal circus in the past — was very much in evidence.

Along North Miami Avenue, a broad plaza on the courthouse building’s eastern flank was jam-packed with folding canopies set up by a horde of local, national and international news crews, some of whom have been virtually camped out for days.

The other side of the avenue was fully occupied by a long parked convoy of satellite and support trucks. Reporters did standups in the glare of spotlights, separated only by yellow security tape from the wavy, grassy earth sculpture that hugs the side of the ship-like courthouse — an artwork by Maya Lin, famed designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

An impromptu line of reporters and other media representatives — some getting paid just to hold a place in the queue — formed at the courthouse breezeway entrance, as if for Taylor Swift concert tickets, because authorities had not yet said how prized spots in the courtroom where Trump is expected to appear at 3 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday would be apportioned. (Later in the day, the court said 20 courtroom seats would be available on a first-come basis, and doors would open for media and the public at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, with overflow remote viewing in a separate jury room).

Security, too, was obviously ramping up, and so were threats of potential disruption. On the other side of courthouse, a row of vehicles from the Federal Protective Service — the cops who guard federal judges and courthouses — was conspicuously parked along the sidewalk. FPS officers conducted occasional sweeps with police dogs.

As Trump’s indictment prompted a wave of angry comments and veiled threats of violence by supporters, authorities were on alert and monitoring plans for pro- and anti-Trump rallies, including a possible Tuesday protest outside the Ferguson courthouse by the Miami branch of far-right provocateurs and MAGA allies the Proud Boys.

At a news conference Monday afternoon, Miami police Chief Manny Morales said officials were planning for anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 people near the courthouse

It’s perhaps fitting that Trump, a real estate mogul with a home in Palm Beach and longtime South Florida ties who’s facing myriad charges and allegations of personal, political and public corruption in a disparate series of legal cases, is getting hauled before a U.S. magistrate in Miami, historians note.

Even if no Miami legal spectacle to date may rival Trump’s Tuesday arraignment in terms of its unprecedented legal and political implications, they say, showy trials and civil and criminal court proceedings, with attendant and boisterous public demonstrations, are nothing new for a town long accustomed to — some might say inured to — high-profile and blatant instances of claimed corruption.

Manuel Noriega also faced criminal charges in Miami

Since the inception of a U.S. court in Miami in 1911, the city has hosted a cornucopia of federal cases against peddlers of swampland, Prohibition bootleggers, smugglers of weapons and immigrants, drug lords, dirty judges and politicians, famous mobsters and fraudsters of all stripes. They included the notorious federal criminal trial and conviction in 1992, on drug trafficking and money-laundering charges, of one foreign leader, Manuel Noriega of Panama, noted Paul George, resident historian at the HistoryMiami museum.

In 1950, the former Dyer federal courthouse building, now in the hands of Miami Dade College, was the site of some of the historic congressional Kefauver hearings that exposed the extent of organized crime in the United States at the time, George said.

One veteran judge alone, senior U.S. District Court Judge Federico Moreno, George wrote in a 2021 article on the history of South Florida’s federal judicial district, has handled trials “dealing with arms merchants, drug dealers, including Miami’s homegrown drug lords, Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta, racial discriminators, firefighting hazing in the City of Miami, Ponzi schemes, ecstasy peddlers, carjacking, anti-pornography ordinances, embezzlement of postal funds, Grand Jury obstruction, airplane hijackers, and the largest civil racketeering judgment in the United States.”

In an interview, George said seeing Trump’s U.S. criminal case land in Miami is in that sense unsurprising: “We’ve had some sensational cases. The federal court here has handled some really charged cases in the past, but the reality is Miami now is more in the limelight than ever. We’re a city with a huge population, an international city full of immigrants, and all these things come before the courts here.

“It’s partly a function or our size, and the size of the federal court system here, and partly because everyone wants to be here.”

While Trump may not exactly want to be in downtown Miami on Tuesday, the fact that he’s about to make history here arises from something of a jurisdictional fluke and his longtime ties to Palm Beach.

The Ferguson courthouse is the main criminal and civil courthouse for the federal Southern District of Florida, which extends from Key West to north of Palm Beach County — where Trump’s principal postpresidency home, the legendary Mar-a-Lago estate — was the site of his alleged criminal mishandling of secret documents, obstruction of investigators and violation of espionage laws.

Trump bought the historic 126-room Palm Beach mansion and estate of General Foods heiress and executive Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1985 after putting about $2,800 down in cash, borrowing the rest of the bargain $7 million purchase price for what was then considered a distressed property, said novelist and historian Les Standiford, author of “Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and the Rise of America’s Xanadu.”

Standiford contends that Trump, who oversaw a meticulous restoration of the house, which was concocted as a Florida fantasyland by its architects, fell under its magical spell. He fought to hang onto it when he went through multiple business bankruptcies in the 1990s by turning it into a money-making private club.

And now it could be part of his undoing.

Mar-a-Lago suggests ‘different class of human being’

“South Florida is where money goes to preen,” Standiford said in an interview. “And that’s what’s always brought trouble to South Florida. The same appeal that brings the money also brings dirty money. When researching the book, I became convinced that by dint of living in the middle of that unimaginable luxury at Mar-a-Lago, Trump fell in love with the place, the most opulent of mansions.

“There is something about living in a place like that makes you feel you’re invulnerable, that you can get away with anything. To live in Mar-a-Lago is to suggest you are a different class of human being. That’s the essential appeal of South Florida. It is a dreamland. It’s beautiful and it’s fantastic and a lot of people live good lives here. Then there are people who can’t stop until they take things to the very end.”

Depending on how things play out in Miami — it’s still unclear whether a trial if it comes to that would take place here, in West Palm’s federal courthouse or somewhere else — the Trump case and the furor around it could be a telling measure of whether or how far Miami-Dade County’s politics have shifted since he was elected president in 2016, Standiford said. Though President Joe Biden won traditionally Democratic Miami-Dade, he did so narrowly as Trump extended his support among local Hispanic voters, Standiford said.

“I think this will be pivotal,” said Standiford, who is not a Trump fan. “We used to count on Miami because, for all its excesses, at least it was politically liberal and open. But at this stage, it’s maybe 50-50. Are we the liberal city in the South we’ve always been, or is this the showpiece that tips us over as the haven for conservative thought?”

Tuesday’s hearing will unfold against a backdrop of an ascendant but nonetheless troubled Miami. Techies and hedge-fund moguls flock to the city and its never-ending stream of new luxury residential towers and mansions, while its pro basketball team, the Heat, are in the NBA finals. Another local franchise, professional hockey’s Florida Panthers, based in Broward County, is making an also-surprising Stanley Cup finals run. And its listing pro soccer team, InterMiami, just landed the sport’s greatest superstar, Lionel Messi.

But a protracted housing crunch and rising economic inequality are making life hard for many Miamians, and the specter of possible corruption again has reared its head in the city.

Miami’s mayor expected to run for president

Miami’s high-profile mayor, Francis Suarez, is embroiled in an FBI investigation because of his relationship with a high-flying local developer, even as he mulls a long-shot presidential run, while City Commissioner Joe Carollo faces a $65 million judgment after losing a federal civil lawsuit from Little Havana business owners who said he abused his authority by siccing city code enforcement officers to shut down their properties. The mayor of North Miami Beach, meanwhile, was arrested this month for allegedly voting illegally.

Some analysts say trying Trump in Miami could be risky for prosecutors because many in the jury pool could be hard-core supporters of the ex-president.

And he has some local allies with a penchant for making noise — and worse.

Trump blasts his prosecutors

Trump flew to Miami on Monday afternoon from his New Jersey golf-club home. He planned to spend the night at his namesake golf resort in suburban Doral, where he was greeted on arrival Monday by a small group of sign-waving supporters. Trump is expected fly back to Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday after the Miami court hearing.

Before making his way south, though, Trump made incendiary remarks about federal prosecutors during a Sunday radio interview with longtime adviser Roger Stone, a fellow South Florida resident with a history of rabble-rousing. Stone helped mobilize demonstrations in Washington, D.C., that served as a prelude to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Stone, who was convicted but pardoned by Trump for impeding a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, also helped organize the so-called Brooks Brothers riot in Miami after the contested 2000 presidential election.

Protesters who turned out to be mostly Republican Party staffers staged a supposedly spontaneous, disorderly demonstration at the Miami-Dade elections office — just a couple of blocks from the downtown Miami federal courts complex — that stopped a critical recount of ballots in the Bush v. Gore contest. The U.S. Supreme Court later tossed the too-close-to-call election to George W. Bush.

On Sunday, Stone told demonstrators to remain peaceful and heed the law.

Credit: Miami Herald