Even for a city accustomed to celebrity appearances, the two-day visit during which Donald Trump is expected be arraigned in Manhattan is likely to be a striking spectacle: there will be protests and celebrations, an all-hands-on-deck police presence and a crush of media attention on the moment in which the first American president is charged with a crime.
Trump is expected to arrive in New York on Monday (Tuesday NZT) from his estate in Florida and head to his erstwhile home in Trump Tower, where he began his pursuit of the presidency in 2015 by descending a golden escalator. The exact timing of the former president’s arrival was unclear, though he was expected to stay the night there before heading to a courthouse in lower Manhattan on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials and outside experts have not warned of major threats from Trump’s supporters or opponents this week. But New York City officials and police were girding for protests near the courthouse and outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where barricades lined the streets for several blocks surrounding the building Sunday, amid camera crews and curiosity seekers.
At the same time, Trump’s legal team was speaking out against the indictment, which came as a result of a grand jury vote in Manhattan on Thursday. In an interview Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, called the looming charges “a political persecution” and “a complete abuse of power” that the former president was ready to fight.
“He’s a tough guy,” Tacopina said, adding that he was looking forward “to moving this thing along as quickly as possible to exonerate him”.
Trump, 76, is expected to surrender at the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg early Tuesday afternoon, before being arraigned in the hulking Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. The arraignment will take place in a 15th-floor courtroom, and Justice Juan M. Merchan, a state Supreme Court judge, will hear the case.
The exact charges have not been unsealed, though they are linked to a payment made during the 2016 election to buy the silence of a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, who says she had a brief sexual relationship with Trump in 2006. Trump denies the affair. Prosecutors are expected to accuse Trump of falsifying business records to hide the nature of the payments to his former fixer, who in turn paid the hush money to Daniels.
A conviction would probably not mandate a minimum prison sentence nor prevent Trump from running for president. But the indictment has roiled the political landscape in America.
Trump, who has led most polls for the Republican nomination, has attacked the prosecution as a partisan move by Bragg, a Democrat, saying it was aimed at crippling his campaign. His Republican rivals have largely echoed him. Many Democrats have praised the indictment as proof that no one is above the law.
The case against Trump, which his lawyers say they plan to take to trial, is likely to be overseen by Merchan, an experienced judge who also handled the case of Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial executive of the Trump Organization. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges last year and testified against the company, which was convicted of doling out off-the-books perks to some of its top executives.
Trump, who will be fingerprinted and have his photo taken, has sharply criticised Bragg and Merchan and announced that he will return to Florida to give a prime-time address from his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach on Tuesday night.
Jason Miller, a top aide to Trump, told Newsmax on Sunday that the speech would show “just how fervent he is”.
“President Trump is very emboldened; he’s very strong; he feels the support from all the people who are backing him,” Miller said.
As Tuesday’s arraignment approached, the Police Department let officers know they may be called in for crowd control, and court officers and Secret Service agents planned routes for getting Trump in and out of the courthouse building on Centre Street without incident. The area was expected to be largely shut down before the arraignment, with traffic closures and perimeter boundaries and patrols.
Lucien Chalfen, a spokesperson for New York’s courts, said on Sunday that court officers are working with local, state and federal law enforcement, including the Secret Service, “to ensure security in and around 100 Centre Street and throughout the city’s courthouses”, adding that officers have “been on a heightened state of readiness for the past two weeks”.
Apart from scheduled trials, all Manhattan criminal court proceedings will be adjourned Tuesday afternoon to reduce foot traffic, Chalfen said.
Trump’s supporters have called for demonstrations in a park across the street from the building, as other events ramp up, including a “homecoming” rally planned for Trump Tower on Monday morning.
On Tuesday, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene, a conservative second-term Republican from Georgia and staunch Trump supporter, is expected to speak at a rally sponsored by the New York Young Republican Club, which says it is expecting several hundred people to protest what it calls a “heinous attack” on Trump.
Gavin Wax, the club’s president, said on Sunday that the demonstration was meant to chastise Bragg for “wasting taxpayer resources on what is effectively a political witch hunt over a bookkeeping infraction that probably has no victim”.
“We’ve never arrested and charged a president, let alone a president who’s also the presumptive nominee, in this country before,” he said. “This is new and uncharted territory.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jesse McKinley and Chelsia Rose Marcius
Photographs by: Hilary Swift, Christopher Lee and Todd Heisler
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES
