What happens next in the Trump indictment?

A New Look at Trump’s ‘Mugshots’ and “Dark Sides’: The New York City Sessions in the Donald Trump Era”

Donald Trump will be surrendering to New York City authorities after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating former president Donald Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.

Trump will plead not guilty and deny any wrongdoing. He said on Truth Social that he will be going to the Courthouse on Tuesday. “America was not supposed to be this way!”

“This is the first time that it really seems likely that the former president of the United States will be having a mugshot, being fingerprinted,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told NPR’s Morning Edition. With Trump facing a number of criminal cases, “we’re in for a very rocky spring,” Brinkley said.

An arraignment is a criminal defendant’s first court appearance. That is when a normal person would appear for photos, fingerprints and arrest paperwork, a process that typically takes hours behind closed doors.

After that, the defendants go before a judge to answer their charges. The criminal process allows defendants to enter a not guilty plea.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said repeatedly that the justice system should treat a former president the same way as any other defendant, a suggestion that Trump may have to go through many of the typical steps of an arraignment.

Even so, his status as a former president is expected to pose some unusual logistical challenges. He has a large legal team and a Secret Service detail. Protests are expected. There will be media attention. The daily operations of a busy state court office will also be involved.

Cyrus Vance, a former Manhattan District Attorney, said in an NPR interview that a lot of outside factors don’t happen for most of the cases. It will be a challenge for the police department, court officers, and investigators to make sure that things are running smoothly.

A far-off case in Mr. Trump’s bid for the presidency – a high-stakes litigator’s dilemma

A judge is expected to find that Trump is not a flight risk. Trump will be free to leave after the hearing. After he returns to Florida that night, he’ll give a speech.

The indictment, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a new and volatile phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. He leads the race in most polls and it will cause a bit of a stir.

He’s still entitled to the same due process as everyone else, says Kim Wehle who is a law professor at the University of Baltimore.

She told All Things Considered there are a lot of hurdles to go through before charges can be brought against him.

“There are a lot of procedural, evidentiary and constitutional protections in place to make sure that that far-off question is fairly adjudicated,” Wehle adds.

Legal experts say that the strength of evidence presented by prosecutors is key to a trial. Another factor will be the jury, said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina.

It will be decided by those 12 people, not by public opinion, according to Gerhardt. The lawyers for Mr. Trump will make sure that the jury is fair and that it does its job.

In Manhattan, where Trump won only 12% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election, it could be challenging to find jurors who don’t already have a negative opinion of him, said Matthew Galluzzo, a former prosecutor in the New York County District Attorney’s Office.

It is likely that most similar cases will take a year to go to trial. He expects that Trump will delay the process as much as possible.

The case of Alvin Bragg, aka Donald Trump, for the prosecution of a hush money payment to a porn star

He adds, “They wont make him an offer that he will accept.” “And I think more than anything he probably wants that public stage to play the victim, to have an audience.”

Mr. Trump was indicted last week on charges connected to a hush money payment to a porn star — becoming the first former American president to face criminal charges.

He surrendered to the district attorney’s office and appeared before a judge, where he entered a not guilty plea to the charges against him.

Mr. Trump arrived at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building, which is part of the district attorney’s office, in an eleven vehicle motorcade. While in custody, he was fingerprinted like any felony defendant, but special accommodations were made for the former president: He was in custody for a short time.

As he entered the courtroom, Mr. Trump was angry. He was accompanied by his legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, and the lawyers handling this case, Todd W. Blanche, Susan R. Necheles and Joseph Tacopina. Mr. Trump went back to Florida after the hearing and did not speak at all.

Mr. Blanche, speaking outside the courthouse after the arraignment, said the former president was upset over the charges but determined to prevail. He is frustrated. He is upset. But I will tell you what I know. He is motivated. He said that it would not slow him down.

The case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, charges the former president with 34 counts of filing false business records in the first degree, a low-level felony that carries a maximum of four years in prison for each count, though if he is convicted a judge could sentence him to probation.

Amid fears of protests and Trump-inspired threats, the events at the courthouse were highly choreographed by the Secret Service, the New York City Police Department, court security and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been investigating Mr. Trump for nearly five years. As helicopters circled overhead, the streets outside the courthouse were crammed with the press corps and hundreds of demonstrators, with supporters and critics of the former president assembling at a nearby park, where they screamed at each other from across metal barricades placed to keep the peace.

The National Enquirer paid a doorman $30,000 to claim that Mr. Trump fathered a child out of wedlock. The claim was found not to be true.

A second payment was made to Karen McDougal, who was Playboy’s Playmate of the year in 1998, who contemplated selling her story of a sexual relationship between Donald Trump and her. She reached a $150,000 agreement with the National Enquirer, which bought the rights to her story to suppress it — a practice known as “catch and kill.”

The indictment focuses on a $130,000 payment made in the final days of the campaign to pornographic star Stormy Daniels. The payment ensured that Ms. Daniels didn’t go public with her story of a sexual liaison with the president.

Prosecutors on Tuesday alleged Trump was a part of an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election. They claim he was a part of an illegal plan to suppress information.

It is unsurprising given the circuslike nature of the political era that Mr. Trump was elected in, and that his first indictment stems from lies.

Mr. Trump called Mr. Bragg a racist and threatened to put his followers to protest, because he didn’t like the district attorney. His rhetoric was similar to what he said before the attack on the Capitol.

It began with the question of whether Mr. Trump would be indicted and soon moved to include predictions about how he would respond. He has fretted over the potential for an arrest, while his aides have been pushing his rivals to criticize prosecutors and back Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bragg is the first prosecuting attorney who has ever held elected office, making him an uneasy choice for the political spotlight.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers had been under the belief that he would be charged with both misdemeanors and felonies, and they were jolted by reports that he would instead be facing dozens of felony counts.

Mr. Trump has spent nearly a half-century fending off criminal charges. He was the subject of an investigation in New Yorker in the late 1970s that set the tone for how he dealt with prosecutors for decades.

Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s actions and his dealings with confidential documents. And a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.

A gag order is something Mr. Trump could potentially face as a result of his comments against Mr. Bragg, Justice Juan Merchan and all others involved in the case. There has been no indication that the judge is going to do that.

The US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the former president in a lawsuit against Stormy Daniels, the victim of a total con job

Marjorie Taylor-Greene held a rally across from the courthouse and is aligned with Mr. Trump. Speaking through a megaphone, she denounced the Democratic Party, though her words were often drowned out by protesters — and counterprotesters — blowing whistles and chanting. After speaking for about five minutes, she was ushered out of the park by the police.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the former president in his effort to recoup additional legal fees from adult film star Stormy Daniels, who had filed and lost a defamation suit against him.

Daniels sued Trump after he called her allegation that a man had threatened her in a parking lot a total con job.

The Court agreed with Mr. Trump’s argument that there is a correlation between politics and public discourse in the United States. The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement.

“Trump’s attorneys reasonably spent the requested 183.35 hours preparing a motion to dismiss, a reply to the opposition to the motion, two extension motions, the answering brief, and the fee application,” it added.

Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon celebrated the ruling in a tweet Tuesday, saying: “Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning. Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”

The reason he committed the crime of falsifying business records was in part to “promote his candidacy,” prosecutors alleged. Trump is not charged with criminal conspiracy.

Trump’s response: Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. The former president began to believe that the news reports about a potential indictment was weeks away. The former president continued his attacks on Bragg and other democrats after the news of the indictment.