Trump to Speak Tuesday Evening from Mar-A-Lago

by Sharon Rondeau

(Apr. 2, 2023) — Former President Donald J. Trump and 2024 Republican presidential candidate will speak publicly at his Florida resort on Tuesday evening following his scheduled “arraignment” in Manhattan earlier that day, his spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, reported on her TruthSocial account Sunday.

As conveyed by mainstream media sources over the last several days, Trump is expected to report to the Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday approximately an hour before the arraignment hearing at 2:15 p.m.

The Secret Service will necessarily be involved in the arrangements surrounding Trump’s travel and appearance, multiple sources have reported.

According to NBC New York as of Saturday:

Sources say Trump will be arraigned on the 15^th floor, Part 59 in the Manhattan Criminal Court building, the same courtroom where Harvey Weinstein was tried and convicted of rape and sexual assault in February 2020.

It is directly across the hall from the courtroom where Trump Corp and Trump Payroll Corp were found guilty in December 2022 of criminal tax fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records. Attorney Susan Necheles defended the Trump Organization in that case and is expected to appear alongside Trump when he is arraigned.

While he is in the courthouse, officials said there are no plans to handcuff Trump or put him in a holding cell. He will be brought to a back area where he will be fingerprinted, but officials said there is no photograph machine in that area, so there are currently no plans to take a mugshot of the former president. However, there is a chance a machine could be moved there by Tuesday, though some officials would rather not run the risk of having the photo leaked.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing associated with the grand-jury indictment, which was leaked to the media Thursday and remains under seal by District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

Following the unsealing of the indictment Tuesday, which reportedly contains multiple criminal counts, a “not guilty” plea will be entered and a “Motion to Dismiss” will likely be forthcoming, according to Joe Tacopina, an attorney representing Trump in the case.

Tacopina and other attorneys opining on the newest development maintain Bragg’s case is “politically motivated.” During his campaign for district attorney, Bragg emphasized he had sued the Trump administration “more than a hundred times,” a point his Democrat primary contender characterized at the time as seeking “political advantage.”

Speaking to ABC News’s “This Week” Sunday morning of what he might expect on Tuesday afternoon, Tacopina told host George Stephanopoulos, “What I hope is that we get in and out of there as quickly as possible, that it’s, at the end of the day, a typical arraignment where we stand before the judge, we say ‘not guilty,’ we set schedules to file motions and whatnot or discovery, and we move forward and get out of there.”

On Thursday Tacopina and other attorneys argued on “Hannity” that Bragg is attempting to invoke a state statute deeming Trump’s alleged inappropriately-labeled “legal expense” a misdemeanor and transform it to a felony.

Previously, federal prosecutors and Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, investigating Trump and the Trump Organization declined to prosecute on the same issue.

The remainder of Harrington’s announcement reads: