April 4 (UPI) — Former President Donald Trump surrendered to authorities at the Manhattan courthouse Tuesday and is being processed ahead his appearance and arraignment before a state Supreme Court judge.
Trump’s arrest today makes him the first former U.S. president to be arraigned on criminal charges.
While Trump’s motorcade was driving to the courthouse, the former president posted to his Truth Social page, calling his impending court appearance “surreal.”
People began to gather near the Manhattan criminal courthouse early Tuesday and streets in the area were closed ahead of the 2:30 p.m. hearing.
The Department of Justice announced that the New York-Broadway and New York Federal Plaza immigration courts would be closed “due to large crowds of people and associated street closures” with several immigration judges holding hearings online.
Trump arrived in New York on Monday and was seen walking into Trump Tower, where he spent the evening.
After the arraignment, Trump is expected to return to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., and deliver a speech at 8:15 p.m.
The vote by a grand jury to proceed with the unprecedented indictment follows an investigation into Trump’s alleged role in efforts to hide $130,000 in payments in the final days of his 2016 presidential campaign to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep silent about an alleged 2006 affair he had with her.
The case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have little to do about who is telling the truth about the supposed sexual tryst — Daniels said it happened at a celebrity golf tournament and Trump said it never did — and more about the falsification of records over payments to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to buy Daniels’ silence.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina has suggested that he may challenge the statute of limitations in the case.
Cohen, who had earned the reputation as Trump’s “fixer,” provided Congress in 2019 with evidence of how Trump misrepresented payments to him for paying off Daniels.
The case, which is expected to drag through the presidential campaign, complicates the GOP primary as Trump remains the party’s leading candidate to take on President Joe Biden again in the 2024 election.
Prosecutors will likely argue that Trump was motivated to keep the alleged relationship with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, silent in the waning days of a tight election against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump has argued that he paid Cohen for legitimate legal expenses, never knew about a hush-money scheme and never had a sexual relationship with the X-rated film actress.
Cohen has served time in federal prison in connection to breaking federal financial campaign rules in the payment to Daniels. Cohen agreed to rescind the signed nondisclosure agreement with Daniels that they said prevented her from talking about the alleged affair publicly.
The Trump-Daniels case has a long history. A federal judge also ordered Daniels to pay Trump nearly $300,000 in legal fees for a defamation lawsuit she filed against him that was eventually dismissed.
Trump was accused of trying to silence a second woman in 2018 by the publishers of the National Enquirer. American Media Inc., told the U.S. Justice Department in 2018 that it worked with the Trump campaign to purchase exclusives from Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also said she had an affair with Trump.
In turn, the publishers would hold the stories indefinitely, a method referred to as “catch and kill.”
Meanwhile, Trump is also facing investigations over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, interfering with the presidential vote count in Georgia and the handling of classified documents that were found at Mar-a-Largo after he left office.
