Trump prepares to surrender in New York on Tuesday as police brace for protests
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A woman holds a sign approving the indictment of former US president Donald Trump near the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida on March 31, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW YORK – Donald Trump prepared on Friday to surrender to prosecutors in Manhattan next week
On Friday, a spokesman for the court overseeing the case said the first hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 2.15pm (2.15am Wednesday, Singapore time), according to CBS News.
A day after a grand jury indicted Trump
Dozens of reporters and camera crews camped out across the street on Friday while 20 court officers stood at the courthouse entrances, monitoring activity on the street.
Trump intends to travel to New York on Monday and stay the night at Trump Tower, people familiar with his preparations said. He has no plans to hold a news conference or address the public while he is in the city, they added.
Trump remained largely quiet on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida, where he spent the day talking on the telephone with advisers.
One of his lawyers, Mr Joe Tacopina, said in a television interview that the former president would not take a plea deal and was prepared to go to trial. The typically defiant stance is likely to endear him to his supporters, who see the prosecution as a politically motivated vendetta by Democrats.
Late on Friday afternoon, Trump burst out on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded, writing in all capital letters that Democrats were “indicting a totally innocent man in an act of obstruction and blatant election interference”.
He concluded that it was all happening “while our country is going to hell”.
He is expected to be arraigned in the Manhattan criminal court on charges related to payments made just before the 2016 presidential election to buy the silence of a porn star
Trump, who has denied the affair, has been charged with more than two dozen counts in a sealed indictment, according to two people familiar with the matter, although the exact charges remain unknown.
Conservative Republicans continued to criticise Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office rebuked House Republicans for attempting to interfere in the case.
The case, which could drag on for months and whose outcome is far from clear, is likely to test the country’s institutions and the rule of law. It will also have deep repercussions for the 2024 campaign for the White House, a race in which Trump remains the Republican front runner.
He has sought to capitalise on the criminal charges to energise his core supporters. On Thursday, he called Mr Bragg “a disgrace” and denounced the indictment as “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history”.
His message was repeated across the conservative media sphere on Friday by Republican politicians and pundits.
Trump was roundly defended on Fox News, including by hosts who had reviled him in private.
Even many of his potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination snapped into line behind him in the hours after news of the indictment broke, looking more like allies than competitors.
All passed on the opportunity to criticise the former president – and some rushed to his defence – in a sign of just how reluctant 2024 contenders are to directly confront him and antagonise his many millions of supporters in the party.
Mr Mike Pence – the former vice-president whose life was put at risk when Jan 6 rioters sought him out after Trump blamed him for allowing Congress to ratify the results of the 2020 election – denounced the indictment for what he called “a campaign finance issue” as an “outrage” and a “political prosecution”.
A few Republicans remained silent, among them Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Senator John Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican.
Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who is also flirting with a presidential run, appeared to be keeping mum as well. So too was Mr Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and one-time Trump ally who is considering a 2024 run for president and who recently vowed that he would never again support the former president.
The indictment in Manhattan concerns hush money payments made in the final days of the 2016 campaign to Ms Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film star who had threatened to go public with her claim that she had a short affair with Trump a decade earlier.
She was paid US$130,000 (S$173,000) not to speak publicly about her claims, and the payments were channelled through Trump’s fixer and personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has said Trump approved the scheme.
The Manhattan case is likely to hinge on the way Trump and his company, the Trump Organisation, handled reimbursing Cohen. Internal records falsely classified the reimbursements as legal expenses, helping conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Cohen.
Trump’s lawyers deny this.
Trump is also under investigation in Georgia, where prosecutors in Fulton County are expected to make a decision soon on whether to seek an indictment against him and his allies over their efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump famously made a call to the state’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to “find 11,780 votes”, which would have given him a victory in the state.
A special grand jury has heard evidence in the Georgia case and produced a final report, though its recommendations on charges remain under seal.
In Washington, a Justice Department special counsel is leading two separate investigations, into Trump’s broader actions to cling to power after his 2020 electoral defeat and into his hoarding of documents marked as classified after leaving office.
If the other criminal investigations result in charges, there is no guarantee that the New York case will be the first to go to trial.
“The fact that New York is first to indict does not mean it will be the first to try,” said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. “A federal indictment will be swifter if it comes.” NYTIMES
