Todd Blanche, a lawyer who joined Trump’s defence team earlier this year for a state criminal case in New York, entered the plea on Trump’s behalf before Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman. Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who joined Trump’s team last fall, was also beside the former president.

Trump had sought a turnout by his supporters, posting on his Truth Social account before arriving at the courthouse that Tuesday was “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY”.

A US Marshals Service spokesman said shortly after 2pm local time that the booking process for Trump and Walt Nauta, an aide to the former president indicted along with him, had been completed. Nauta did not enter a plea at the hearing, because he did not have a Florida lawyer to represent him. An arraignment for him was scheduled for June 27.

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Neither man was required to surrender their passport, and no limits were placed on their travel. The two left the courthouse by late afternoon and headed to Miami International Airport, where he boarded his private jet.

Once back at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey later Tuesday, Trump delivered a speech attacking Biden, a half-hour rant in which he accused the current White House occupant and other recent presidents, Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W Bush, of keeping classified information unlawfully.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family … and all others involved with the destruction of our elections, our borders and our country itself. And when I’m re-elected – and we will get re-elected we have no choice … I will totally obliterate the deep state.”

Biden’s retention of documents from his days as vice-president in the administration of Barack Obama is also under investigation as per the orders of the president’s Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Citing the Presidential Records Act, Trump reiterated to his supporters that he had “an absolute right” to hold onto the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI.

That claim prompted the National Archives and Records Administration to issue a statement earlier this month that the law “requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to [NARA] at the end of their administrations”.

The federal case against 76-year-old Trump, the Republican Party’s front-runner for the nomination, has fuelled further strife in an already divided electorate.

Many Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have condemned the US Justice Department for what they claim is a political prosecution meant to damage Trump’s chances of retaking the White House from Biden.

Criticism about preferential treatment based on political loyalties flared in an earlier stage, when US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, had ruled in the former president’s favour by appointing an independent arbiter to review the classified documents taken by the FBI.

That ruling was thrown out by an appeal court panel of three judges, two of whom were also appointed by Trump.

More recently, allegations of bias are coming from the other direction.

Failing to acknowledge that Garland brought in an independent special counsel, Jack Smith, to run the investigation and case as a way to insulate it from the perception of interference, McCarthy and some other Republican lawmakers have turned to inflammatory rhetoric.

US congressman Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, for example, tweeted shortly after the indictment was unsealed last week: “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye”.

In his speech in New Jersey, Trump called Smith a “thug” who “does political hit jobs”, and attacked him for his time spent as a top prosecutor in The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo.

“It’s no wonder this raging lunatic was shipped off to The Hague to prosecute war criminals using globalist tribunals not beholden to the Constitution or the rule of law,” he said.

When asked about the indictments against Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, his closest rival for the nomination, has repeatedly railed against the “weaponisation” of prosecutions, including the state case in New York stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actress.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case as well.

Smith, who started as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office in the 1990s, is also leading another investigation into Trump’s role in the violent attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021, in a bid to halt Congress’s certification of Biden’s election victory.

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Smith attended the hearing, though another prosecutor, David Harbach, represented the government at the hearing.

While Trump has some Republican support, he does not have the party fully lined up behind him.

Some prominent Republicans – including William Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general – have said the charges make him unfit to run for president next year.

“This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here – the victim of a witch hunt – is ridiculous … He’s not a victim here,” Barr said in a Fox News interview about the indictment on Sunday. “He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets the country has.”

Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor now running for the Republican nomination, said on Monday on CNN that the conduct alleged in the indictment was “inexcusable”.

Christie, a former US attorney, said that “it is a very tight, very evidence-laden indictment” and that “the conduct in there is awful”.

Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN who is also running for the Republican nomination, criticised the Justice Department for pursuing the man who appointed her to the UN post. But she also called Trump’s retention of classified documents “reckless”.

“If this indictment is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security,” Haley told Fox News on Monday.

She added: “This puts all of our military men and women in danger, if you’re going to talk about what our military is capable of or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies”.