WEST PALM BEACH, UNITED STATES (AFP) – Donald Trump was expected to fly to New York in the United States (US) for his historic arraignment on criminal charges, taking the US and the office of the presidency into uncharted and potentially volatile territory.
The 76-year-old billionaire was indicted last week by a grand jury on a series of counts related to a hush-money payment made to a film star during the 2016 election campaign.
The Republican Party provocateur, who has already started a 2024 White House bid, is the first sitting or former US president ever charged with a crime.
His aides said Trump will decamp from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and fly to New York, his former base of operations.
There, as part of his arraignment scheduled for today, he will undergo the standard booking procedure of being fingerprinted and photographed, likely to result in one of the most famous mugshots of the modern era.
Trump, who plans to make public remarks today at 8.15pm from Florida, denounced the legal proceedings as a “witch hunt” and “political persecution”, and assailed the judge assigned to hear it. It remains to be seen whether the famously unpredictable Trump will follow the script, or find a way to upend events.
The New York Police Department is on high alert ahead of the extraordinary arraignment, with a potential for street protests by Trump supporters and detractors.
The force has ordered its 36,000 officers to be in uniform and ready to deploy, NBC News reported, citing official sources.
An arraignment is a practiced, established ritual, but there is no roadmap for a former president’s surrender to court authorities. “It’s all up in the air,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on CNN on Sunday.
While a “perp walk”, in which a defendant is escorted in handcuffs past media cameras, is unlikely for an ex-president under US Secret Service protection, “I anticipate them trying to get every ounce of publicity out of this that they can get”, Tacopina said.
But Trump is girding for battle, Tacopina added. While the specific charges still remain under seal, the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revolves around the investigation of USD130,000 paid to star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump’s former lawyer and aide Michael Cohen, who testified that he arranged the payment to Daniels in exchange for her silence about a tryst she said she had with Trump in 2006.
