WASHINGTON, D.C. — Standing among the boisterous crowd of media and onlookers awaiting the arraignment of former U.S. president Donald Trump is one Native woman.

Wearing a red ribbon skirt and holding a sign reading “Not Above The Law,” Sophia Marjanovic, who hails from the Fort Peck Tribes as well as the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, makes her presence known outside of the federal courthouse here. Her voice amplified by a megaphone, she warns the crowd about the ongoing effects of colonization.

More specifically, Marjanovic links Trump’s long line of legal troubles to America’s long history of mistreatment of Native peoples. Comparing his alleged criminal behaviors to a continuation of colonial harms, she says the Republican former president’s misdeeds encourage others to repeat historic wrongs.

“They’re emboldened because of Trump,” Marjanovic says outside of the Elijah Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in the nation’s capital.

“They’re emboldened because of the land they stole from us,” adds Marjanovic.

Trump, 77, who served one term in office, is being accused of trying to overturn the results of the election he lost in November 2020. Federal prosecutors allege he conspired with others to order to stop the certification of the American people’s vote.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, a U.S. government attorney appointed by the Department of Justice to investigate interference with the 2020 election, announced the charges on Tuesday. Similar to Marjanovic’s warning, he said Trump’s “lies” directly contributed to a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol during the certification more than two years ago.

“The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Smith said in a statement from D.C. “As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies.”

“Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election,” Smith said of Trump.

But Trump, who is already facing criminal indictments in Florida and New York and is still under legal jeopardy in Georgia, remains defiant. In the hours before being brought to a courthouse less than a half-mile from the site of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, he said the charges against him amounted to a “witch hunt” by his political rivals.

“Biden and his family steal Millions and Millions of Dollars, including BRIBES from foreign countries, and I’m headed to D.C. to be ARRESTED for protesting a CROOKED ELECTION. UNFAIR VENUE, UNFAIR JUDGE,” Trump said in reference to President Joe Biden, one of his rivals.

“We are a Nation in Decline,” Trump said on a social media platform he founded after being banned by other platforms for posting incendiary content.

At a 4pm Eastern hearing, Trump entered a plea of not guilty in this same place where hundreds of criminal defendants have been charged for their roles in the January 6 attack. Many have gone to trial, while many others have pleaded guilty — including one figure with an unverified claim of Native identity, who admitted that he participated in the violence at the behest of the former president.

“We stopped the steal because they were in there and they weren’t going to stop the steal, so we stopped the steal, we took our country back,” Jorge Aaron Riley said on social media on January 6, 2021.

Some two years later Riley struck a different tone, pleading guilty in this same federal courthouse on March 7 to one felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding. He admitted that he tried to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying the election that Trump lost.

But just like Trump, Riley, who is due to be sentenced here next month, isn’t alone in his legal troubles. More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the breach of the U.S. Capitol, with many already serving prison sentences for their roles in the violence.

Unlike his supporters, however, Trump does not seem to be hurting. He’s running for president for a third time, with polls showing him far ahead of other Republican challengers. In between snipes about the “witch hunt,” he makes frequent appeals for donations to his coffers.

Meanwhile, his Republican rivals have not tried to turn his criminal cases into a campaign cause — seemingly out of fear of alienating the voters that continue to support Trump.

Yet should he win the GOP nomination, Trump would once again face President Biden, a Democrat, in the general election in 2024. The Democratic National Committee has already begun Native vote efforts, in hopes of repeating the successes that brought their candidate to the White House, ushering in a new era of nation-to-nation relationships between tribes and the U.S. government.

“Through making smart investments in Tribal infrastructure projects, partnering with Tribal Nations, and supporting Native owned businesses, ‘Bidenomics’ is proving that we can invest in the American people,” the DNC’s Native Coalitions group said in an email to supporters last week.

The message followed a visit by President Kamala Harris to the Gila River Indian Community. The tribe’s homelands are in Arizona, a state where the vote crucially turned to Biden’s favor in 2020.

“President Joe Biden and I believe that the bonds between our nations are sacred,” Kamala said at the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, Arizona on July 6.

“And we believe we have a duty to safeguard and strengthen those bonds, to uphold our trust and treaty obligations, to honor tribal sovereignty, and to ensure tribal self-determination,” Harris continued.

President Biden, who has been on vacation in his home state of Delaware this week, did not respond when reporters on Thursday morning asked about Trump’s arraignment.

When asked whether he would speak to reporters following a bike ride in the oceanside community of Rehoboth Beach, the president had a short answer: “Probably not.”