Donald Trump, the former US president and front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has arrived at a Manhattan courthouse to be formally charged in a watershed moment as his supporters and detractors noisily rally outside.
Trump, 76, is the first sitting or former president to face criminal charges. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last week in a case stemming from a 2016 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, though the specific charges had yet to be disclosed.
Trump was driven to the courthouse in a motorcade on Tuesday after departing his New York residence at Trump Tower.
Trump, who has said he is innocent and is due to plead not guilty, was expected to surrender to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg before an arraignment proceeding before Justice Juan Merchan. The arraignment, where Trump will be in court to hear charges and have a chance to enter a plea, was planned for 2.15 pm local time.
"Today (Tuesday) is the day that a ruling political party ARRESTS its leading opponent for having committed NO CRIME," Trump, who flew to New York from his Florida home on Monday, said in a fundraising email sent out on Tuesday morning.
On social media, Trump ahead of the arraignment renewed his attacks on Merchan, who last year also presided over a trial in which Trump's real estate company was convicted of tax fraud.
Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, in November announced a bid to regain the presidency in 2024 in a bid to deny Democratic President Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, a second term in the White House.
On a cool and sunny early spring day in the most-populous US city, Trump supporters and detractors were separated by barricades set up by police to try to keep order, though there were some confrontations.
"Let's keep it civil, folks," a police officer told them.
Hundreds of Trump supporters, at a park across from the Manhattan courthouse, cheered and blew whistles, outnumbering his detractors. The Trump critics held signs including one of Trump dressed in a striped jail uniform behind bars and another that read, "Lock Him Up."
Typically, people facing arraignment are fingerprinted and have mugshot photographs taken. The court appearance was likely to be brief.
"It won't be a long day in court," Joseph Tacopina, one of Trump's lawyers, said on ABC.
Yahoo News late on Monday reported that Trump would face 34 felony counts for falsification of business records.
Any trial is at least more than a year away, legal experts said. Being indicted or even convicted does not legally prevent Trump from running for president.
Five photographers will be admitted to the courtroom before the arraignment starts to take pictures for several minutes. Trump's lawyers had urged a judge to keep them out, arguing they would worsen "an already almost circus-like atmosphere."
Bragg, a Democrat who led the investigation, was set to give a news conference after the arraignment. Trump and his allies have portrayed the case as politically motivated.
In a social media post, Trump said Manhattan Criminal Court was a "very unfair venue" and urged that the case be moved to the New York City borough of Staten Island, which regularly votes Republican. It was unclear whether Trump's lawyers would argue in court on Tuesday for a change of venue.
Trump will return to Florida and deliver remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday evening, his office said.
The Manhattan grand jury that indicted Trump heard evidence about a $130,000 payment to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has said she was paid to keep silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006.
Trump denies a sexual relationship but has acknowledged reimbursing his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for the payment.
Trump faces a separate criminal probe by a Democratic local prosecutor in Georgia into whether he unlawfully tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. He also faces two US Justice Department investigations led by a special counsel into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
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