Trump’s arraignment: everything you need to know about the timeline of the legal proceedings

Former President Trump is expected to have a busy Tuesday, starting the day with his arraignment in a New York courtroom before flying back to Florida, where he is expected to deliver remarks later that evening.

Trump is expected to arrive at the New York City courthouse at 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning, hours ahead of his scheduled arraignment in front of Judge Juan Merchan at 2:15 p.m. The proceedings are expected to take 15 to 30 minutes, with extensive security around the building expected to search everyone in the courtroom twice.

Trump is likely to use a side entrance to the building, though the exact details of his arrival will not be known even by the court until shortly before his arrival for security reasons.

According to legal experts, Trump is likely to be fingerprinted and will take a mug shot, but there is not expected to be a “perp walk” or public arrival for security reasons. Trump is also unlikely to be handcuffed as a result of an arrangement made between the former president’s legal team and the district attorney’s office.

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“I imagine that he will have be fingerprinted and have his mugshot, though I don’t think there will be a perp walk and I don’t think he will be handcuffed or anything like that,” Michael McDaniels, a professor at the Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, told NPR. “Until they can take him before a judge, and then he will enter a plea, he will be arraigned as we say, on the charges against him, and asked how he pleads to those charges.”

The details of the indictment of the former president are still under seal but are expected to relate to alleged 2016 “hush money” payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, which the DA’s office has been investigation for five years.

Prosecutors are expected to argue that the $130,000 payment for Daniels and the $150,000 given to McDougal amounted to improper donations to the Trump campaign and helped him win the 2016 election.

McDaniels expects that Trump will loudly and boldly plead “not guilty.”

“I don’t know whether or not Donald Trump, with his age and stature, I don’t know whether he’ll ever go to prison or not, but certainly there is going to be a criminal justice process going forward against the former president,” McDaniels said.

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About 50-60 members of the press are expected to be allowed in the actual courtroom where the proceedings take place. There will also be two backup courtrooms for security reasons, and reporters will be forced to stay in the courtroom after proceedings end as the former president is escorted out of the building.

What will happen after proceedings remains unclear. Trump will be able to decide for himself whether he wants to exit the building through a side entrance or out the front doors, with some sources expecting Trump to prefer to exit through the front doors.

From there, Trump has already announced that he plans to travel back to his Florida home to deliver remarks later Tuesday evening.

“President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, will deliver remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, at 8:15PM EDT,” according to a statement released by the former president Sunday.

However, exactly what Trump will be able to say in those remarks is still a mystery, with some legal experts arguing he is likely to be under a “gag order” following the arraignment.

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“I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,” Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor, told Insider Friday.

In recent weeks, Trump has decried the case against him as politically motivated and designed to derail “Make America Great Again movement.”

“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement last week. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats- the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country- have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

However, Levin believes Trump may be “very limited” in what he is able to say after the proceedings.

“This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,” Levin said. “He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.”

After Tuesday, it is unclear how long the case could continue to drag on. Matthew Galluzzo, a former prosecutor in the New York County District Attorney’s Office, told NPR that Trump’s legal team is likely to argue the former president cannot get a fair trial in Manhattan, where he is widely unpopular, and to push for a change of venue.

While similar cases would likely take a year to get to trial, Galluzzo argued that Trump’s team may opt to delay the process and push it until after next year’s election.

“If he can push this thing back until after the election then he can effectively win the trial that way,” he said. 

“They’re not gonna make him an offer that he would accept,” Galluzzo continued. “And I think more than anything he probably wants that public stage to play the victim, to have an audience.”