The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the arrangements, said that “dozens and dozens of agents” will be required to secure the former president’s travel between Mar-A- Lago, his Florida home and private club, and New York.
No other former president has ever been charged with a crime. Trump’s indictment comes as he is running for another term in the White House — a quest that he is permitted by U.S. law to continue even if he is convicted.
The indictment announced Thursday evening remains under seal, which means the charges have not been made public. But a Manhattan grand jury has been hearing evidence about a payment made before the 2016 presidential election to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress, to keep her from publicly discussing an affair she says she had with Trump years earlier.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his investigators have spent months probing whether Trump falsified business records connected to the Daniels payment in a way that could constitute a campaign-finance violation.
The New York probe is one of multiple criminal investigations that have engulfed Trump’s post-presidency. He is also the focus of investigations in Georgia and D.C. related to his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and continues to accuse law enforcement agencies that investigate him of conducting political witch hunts. In a statement Thursday evening, he charged that Democrats “have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference. Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done.”
The next step in the criminal proceeding is Trump’s surrender, which people familiar with the plans have said will happen on Tuesday. He will be fingerprinted, photographed and brought to the courtroom of Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan for an arraignment, which is a brief hearing where charges are unsealed if they have not already been made public, and the defendant generally enters a not-guilty plea.
On Friday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle briefed her deputies about plans for Tuesday, the law enforcement official said, telling them that the agency will take “the necessary steps” to protect Trump from harm, including placing agents and officers in a bubble formation to separate him from approaching members of the public. But she also stressed that the Secret Service has not sought any special accommodations in the court’s standard processing and arraignment procedure, the official said, such as closing off courthouse hallways to the public.
In securing Trump’s safety, Secret Service agents will be primarily responsible for his entry to and exit from the courthouse, the official said. Court security officers will manage the former president’s movements inside the building, in the company of Trump’s security detail, and New York police officers will secure the outside streets surrounding the courthouse and along Trump’s motorcade route through the city.
The New York Police Department will have a heavier-than-normal presence around the courthouse, and officers who normally wear street clothes or suits have been directed to come to work in uniform in case there’s a need to monitor demonstrations, another law enforcement official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security arrangements.
In D.C., the Capitol Police and the Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms sent a warning to Senate staffers on Friday that they anticipate “demonstration activity across the country related to the indictment of former President Trump.”
“While law enforcement is not tracking any specific, credible threats against the Capitol or state offices, there is potential for demonstration activity,” the authorities said, according to a statement first reported by Punchbowl News.
They also told staffers to expect an increase in Capitol Police and law enforcement presence around the Capitol in the coming days. Both chambers of Congress are in recess for the next two weeks in observance of the spring religious holidays.
Jacobs reported from New York. Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
