Tag: Joe Tacopina

NYC lawyer Joe Tacopina can rep Trump in hush money case despite past dealings with Stormy Daniels: judge

New York City lawyer Joe Tacopina convinced the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case that his prior dealings with porn star Stormy Daniels wouldn’t pose a conflict representing the former president, according to a filing reviewed by the Daily News Monday.

Prosecutors flagged Tacopina’s prior communications with Daniels after he joined Trump’s team in the case centering on an illegal payment to the adult film star ahead of the 2016 election. Daniels’ lawyer, Clark Brewster, filed a complaint with a grievance committee after finding out Tacopina was on the case.

Trump’s Personal Lawyer Michael Cohen Appears For Court Hearing Related To FBI Raid On His Hotel Room And Office

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York on April 16, 2018 in New York City.

At Trump’s April arraignment, Tacopina told Judge Juan Merchan that Daniels had called his firm in 2018 when she was looking for a lawyer and spoke with one of his associates and a paralegal. At the time, he suggested he would represent her in a television interview.

“We refused the case. I did not offer her representation. Didn’t speak to her. Didn’t meet with her,” Tacopina said at the hearing where Trump told Merchan he understood his right to conflict-free representation.

After meeting with Tacopina and conferring with an ethics expert, Merchan, in a Sept. 1 letter, said he would accept there is no conflict.

“[The] court will revisit this issue with Mr. Trump when he next appears virtually on February 15, 2024,” Merchan wrote. “[The] court accepts your suggestion that you do not participate in the examination of Ms. Daniels if she is called as a witness at trial.”

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Marc A. Hermann for New York Daily News

Judge Juan Merchan

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felonies alleging he reimbursed his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, under the table for the hush money payment that violated election laws. According to evidence leading to Cohen’s federal conviction, the money was intended to silence Daniels about an extramarital tryst in 2006.

The case is slated for trial on March 25, though Merchan has signaled openness to pushing it back when the parties reconvene in February. Trump faces another three trials in Florida, Washington, D.C., and Georgia on unrelated charges.

Reached for comment, Tacopina said, “I have said from day one there is no conflict. Now the court has said the same.”

Brewster did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The News. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Molly Crane-Newman

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September 18, 2023
Judge finds no conflict for Trump attorney over Stormy Daniels communications in hush money case | CNN Politics

CNN
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A New York Supreme Court judge ruled that 2018 communications with adult film star Stormy Daniels should not sideline defense attorney Joe Tacopina from representing former President Donald Trump in his criminal trial related to an alleged hush money scheme to silence Daniels.

Daniels’ communications with Tacopina and others at his firm included details relating to Daniels’ situation when she was seeking legal representation in 2018, her current lawyer, Clark Brewster, told CNN in March.

Brewster, who claimed the communications show a disclosure of confidential information from Daniels, said he gave the exchanges to prosecutors. Ethics experts told CNN at the time that limits could be placed on Tacopina, including disqualification.

Instead, Tacopina won’t question Daniels if she takes the stand at trial. “The court accepts your suggestion that you do not participate in the examination of Ms. Daniels if she is called as a witness at trial,” Judge Juan Merchan wrote.

Tacopina has maintained there is no conflict of interest and said no confidential information was shared with him or his office.

Merchan ultimately sided with Trump’s lawyer in a letter penned earlier this month telling Tacopina that he accepts the defense attorney’s representations that there is no conflict.

The judge also said he’d revisit the issue with Trump at his next court appearance in February.

“I have said from Day One there is no conflict. Now the court has said the same,” Tacopina told CNN Monday in response to the letter.

Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office first flagged the potential conflict to Merchan at Trump’s arraignment in April, saying Daniels will likely be a witness at Trump’s criminal trial.

Trump, who has denied the alleged affair with Daniels, has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the alleged hush money scheme.

Merchan instructed the former president to seek advice from other attorneys on the matter while it played out.

Since the April arraignment, the parties submitted briefs and met for a sealed proceeding in July to further discuss the potential conflict, according to Merchan’s letter.

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August 2, 2023
Attorneys for Trump and E. Jean Carroll dispute character and evidence in closing arguments of civil rape trial | CNN Politics

New York
CNN
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E. Jean Carroll’s civil battery and defamation trial against Donald Trump neared a close Monday with closing arguments as her attorney told a federal jury in New York that no one is above the law, while Trump’s lawyer said not to hold any negative feelings about the former president against him.

“In this country, even the most powerful person can be held accountable in court,” said attorney Roberta Kaplan. “No one, not even a former president, is above the law.”

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said he knows Trump is a divisive figure, but that shouldn’t matter to jurors when reaching a verdict.

“People have very strong feelings about Donald Trump. That’s obvious,” Tacopina said. “There’s a time and a secret place to do that: it’s called a ballot box during an election.”

“They want you to hate him enough to ignore the facts,” Tacopina added. “All objective evidence cuts against her.”

Trump asked about infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ tape in deposition. See his reaction

Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleges Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the spring of 1996 and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Attorneys for Carroll and Trump rested their respective cases last Thursday. Carroll’s legal team put on 11 witnesses in her case, including the writer herself, over seven trial days. Trump did not put on a defense and ultimately opted not to testify, as is his right.

Kaplan pointed out that Trump didn’t attend the trial, even though clips from his deposition were shown.

“And you only saw him on video. He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan said.

Carroll’s attorney showed clips of Trump’s video deposition taken last October including a moment where Trump mistook Carroll for his ex-wife. This shows, Kaplan said, that Carroll “was exactly his type.”

Tacopina stressed that the former president did not need to appear in court to testify in his own defense.

“How do you prove a negative?” Tacopina asked. “Challenging the story is our defense. There are no witnesses for us to call. There’s no witness for us to call because he was not there, it didn’t happen.”

Tacopina said Trump did not defame Carroll when he denied her false accusations on social media. Trump’s lawyer told jurors not be confused by the verdict form when they see it. “If there’s no rape, there’s no defamation. There was no sexual assault and there was no defamation, they go hand in hand.”

The jury again saw the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and heard Trump describe how he aggressively moves on women without their consent because they let you “when you’re a star.”

Trump revealed his “playbook” for handling women on the tape when he thought no one was listening, Kaplan said. “Telling you in his very own words how he treats women.”

According to Kaplan, Trump and his lawyers want the jury to believe Carroll and the other witnesses in her case are a part of a huge “hoax” to take down the former president. “The big lie,” Kaplan called it.

“There is only one person here who is lying and that person is Donald Trump,” Kaplan said.

In order to side with Trump’s defense, “You’d need to conclude that Donald Trump, the nonstop liar, is the only person in this room telling the truth.”

Tacopina responded by criticizing Trump’s language on the tape but said the crude nature still doesn’t make Carroll’s allegations true.

“They’re trying to take parts of Donald Trump that you dislike or even hate,” Tacopina said. “You can think Donald Trump is a rude and crude person and that her story makes no sense. Both of those things can be true.”

Carroll’s attorney also showed the jury a chart mapping how allegations from Carroll, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff reveal a pattern of aggressive behavior. In each woman’s testimony at trial they described how Trump first engaged them in a semipublic place, then allegedly grabbed them suddenly, then later denied the allegations and said “she is too ugly for anyone to assault,” Kaplan said.

Trump has denied Leeds’ and Stoynoff’s allegations against him.

“Three different women, decades apart, but one single pattern of behavior. What happened to Ms. Carroll is not unique in that respect. Trump’s physical attacks and verbal attacks are his standard operational procedure,” Kaplan said.

The jury in this case can award Carroll damages if they believe her account.

“For E. Jean Carroll this lawsuit is not about the money,” Kaplan said. “It’s about getting her good name back.”

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you how much you should award E. Jean Carroll in damages. What is the price for decades of living alone without companionship? No one to cook dinner with, no one to walk your dog with, no one to watch TV with. And feeling for decades that you’re dirty and unworthy,” Kaplan said. “I’m not going to put a number on that.”

Responding in his closing, Tacopina accused Carroll of fabricating her rape allegations to sell her book and make money.

“She’s abused this system, bringing false claims for, amongst other things, money, status, and political reasons,” Tacopina told the jury. “You cannot let her profit to the tune of millions of dollars for her abuse of this process.”

District Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to Roberta Kaplan) is expected to instruct and charge the jury to begin deliberations on Tuesday.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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May 8, 2023
Trump’s Team Is Reportedly Sick Of His ‘Loudmouth’ Lawyer

According to a new Rolling Stone report, some of Donald Trump’s lawyers have raised concerns about Joe Tacopina, the attorney co-leading the former president’s defense in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office case.

Trump was indicted last week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his role in a 2016 payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for the porn star’s silence on an alleged affair. In the lead-up to the indictment, Trump indicated he was aware charges were looming, and Tacopina made a spate of sometimes contentious media appearances to discuss the case.

Citing a source familiar with the matter and another person close to Trump, Rolling Stone reported that Trump’s other current lawyers had privately described Tacopina as “dumb” and a “loudmouth.” Trump’s attorneys and advisers have warned the former president to be wary of Tacopina and that he can’t trust his loyalty, the sources said. Another source familiar with the matter called him “such a frickin’ idiot,” Rolling Stone reported.

In a statement, Tacopina told the magazine: “When anonymous sources make comments criticizing others, it reveals jealousy and cowardice. Anyone who takes a look at my track record of trial success and the results I have achieved for my clients couldn’t seriously criticize my work or my intelligence.”

Tacopina has a record of representing cops and high-profile clients, including rapper Meek Mill and baseball player Alex Rodriguez. He’s also spent more than a decade as a top executive across several Italian soccer clubs and worked as a pundit in American media.

During appearances on CNN in 2018 as a legal commentator, Tacopina made comments about Trump and the Daniels hush money payment that conflict with the defense he’s presented since taking on Trump as a client.

In those appearances, he suggested he believed that Trump did have an affair with Daniels and that the payment “could be looked as an in-kind contribution at the time of the election,” which could be “a real problem.”

But now, Tacopina has reversed course, characterizing the payment to Daniels as “extortion,” denying Trump had the affair and dismissing the possibility of campaign finance violations.

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April 2, 2023
Before he represented Trump, defense attorney speculated Stormy Daniels saga was true and payment could be seen as an in-kind campaign contribution | CNN Politics

CNN
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Former President Donald Trump’s defense attorney repeatedly speculated as a legal pundit that Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels likely happened and that the $130,000 payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 election could be seen as an in-kind campaign contribution, contradicting his recent legal and public defense of Trump.

Joe Tacopina, a defense attorney representing Trump in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigation of Trump, made the comments in 2018 as a prominent legal commentator – years before he would ultimately represent the former president in the case that may indict Trump.

In multiple appearances on CNN in the spring of 2018, Tacopina speculated that Trump had an affair with Daniels after she detailed their encounter and because “to me, you know it means it’s true because he hasn’t threatened to sue” nor did he tweet about it. He also said that as a lawyer, he would have advised Trump to admit to the affair and move on.

“I mean, it’s remarkable when you talk about the president of the United States, but it, honestly, it’s not remarkable when you’re talking about Donald Trump, the president of the United States,” Tacopina said. “No one was here, is going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this!’ This is why I’ve been saying since day one if they had just said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I mean, he survived much greater – I don’t even know if they’re called scandals – but episodes than this. This is from 2006. I mean, this is way before he was the president.”

“I’ve said all along, if he had just come out and said, ‘Yeah, I did. So what?’ And just chalk that up to another one of the things on his list of minor scandals, he gets through,” said Tacopina in another appearance on CNN in 2018.

“But she went into great detail about her one-night stand with him. What else can she say? There is nothing else to tell,” added Tacopina.

And in the spring of 2018, Tacopina acknowledged that the episode could put Trump in jeopardy “because this could be looked as an in-kind contribution at the time of the election. This is a real problem. And they both, and I’m telling you this, the reason we’re here, I strongly believe is because of the words of both Michael Cohen and Donald Trump.”

But five years later, acting as Trump’s defense attorney, Tacopina reversed his argument, calling the payment to Daniels “plain extortion,” dismissing potential campaign finance violations and repeating Trump’s denials that he ever had the affair.

“This was a plain extortion. And I don’t know, since when we’ve decided to start prosecuting extortion victims. He’s denied, vehemently denied, this affair,” said Tacopina on “Good Morning America” last week. “But he had to pay money because there was going to be an allegation that was gonna be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign. And the campaign finance laws are very, very clear, George, that you cannot have something that’s even primarily related to the campaign to be considered campaign finance law.”

In a statement to CNN, Tacopina said that he offered his opinion based on a hypothetical and that “my mind hadn’t changed about the issue but what has changed is that I learned the facts.”

The comment is just one of many that Tacopina made about the former president, according to a CNN KFile review of other comments. In one appearance, made in February 2021 on WABC radio, a local New York station, Tacopina said Trump deserved impeachment for his verbal attacks inciting his supporters – who he called “a bunch of idiots” and “lunatics” – to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I don’t think he did anything criminal,” Tacopina said on WABC in February 2021 when discussing the riot. “Did I think he did something impeachable? Yes, I do.”

“Do I think they’re divisive? Yes. Do I think he spreads hate? Yes. Do I think everything he’s done is wrong? No. Do I think he did some good things? Yes. So I like to just sort of call it like I see it, and I’m not so partisan one way or another,” Tacopina continued. “But you know, when you say to a bunch of lunatics, a bunch of, you know, people who have had a propensity towards violence. Before these groups that are gathered, you know, which was a planned gathering, ‘Hey, go to the Capitol and fight and fight.’ Fight for what? Go to the Capitol and fight for what does fight mean to these idiots? What do you think it meant?…They killed people.”

“Do I think he thought they were gonna break some windows and do some things? Absolutely,” he later added.

Tacopina would later represent one of the Capitol rioters who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who later died of natural causes on January 7; the rioter was sentenced to 80 months in prison.

Tacopina also previously criticized the former president for attacking the justice system.

“This is the Justice Department, how it works every single day of the week. But for some reason, the president cannot cope with that,” said Tacopina in 2018.

“What chills me as a lawyer, forget about being a defense lawyer or a former prosecutor as I am, is that our president is attacking the foundation of our justice system in this country by calling to question the FBI, the Justice Department, his own attorney general, every judge whoever rules against him. Yeah, it’s just unhealthy for the sort of the health of this justice system.”

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March 24, 2023
Jimmy Kimmel Goes To Town On Donald Trump’s New Lawyer

Jimmy Kimmel mocked Donald Trump’s new lawyer on Thursday with a montage of his excuses for the former president.

Joe Tacopina is the latest legal adviser who the former president has drafted in amid multiple investigations.

Earlier this week, the attorney tried to snatch a piece of paper from MSNBC’s Ari Melber while defending Trump’s claim about not knowing hush money payments were paid to adult actor Stormy Daniels after their alleged affair.

Tacopina repeatedly claims Trump is a victim of extortion in the supercut.

Per Kimmel, the lawyer “seems to have been born in the ashtray of Rudy Giuliani’s Lincoln Continental.”

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March 16, 2023
E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rest their cases in civil rape trial, but Trump could still testify | CNN Politics

New York
CNN
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Attorneys for E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump rested their respective cases in the battery and defamation trial against the former president in Manhattan federal court on Thursday evening.

Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleges Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

While resting his case means Trump legally waived his right to testify in his own defense, District Judge Lewis Kaplan left a window for Trump to change his mind over the weekend.

Kaplan ruled that Trump’s legal team has until 5 p.m. Sunday to petition the court to reopen the defense case for the sole purpose of allowing Trump to testify. The judge said he ordered the precautionary measure in light of Trump’s public comments made earlier Thursday suggesting he would make an appearance in court before the trial ended.

Trump, who has not appeared in the courtroom at any point during the trial, told reporters in Ireland on Thursday he’ll “probably attend” the trial.

“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who is extremely hostile,” Trump said in Doonbeg, Ireland, according to Reuters.

During a sidebar on Thursday afternoon, Trump’s attorney tried repeatedly to reassure Kaplan that his client would not take the stand and implied that the judge has an idea of what it’s like representing the former president.

“I know you understand what I am dealing with,” Joe Tacopina told the judge, according to a court transcript.

If Trump does not change his mind, the parties are set to give closing arguments to the jury at 10 a.m. on Monday.

Carroll’s legal team put on 11 witnesses in her case including the writer herself over seven trial days.

Republican panelist: Trump’s glorification of accused Jan 6 rioters is “disgusting.”

Earlier Thursday the jury saw more clips of Trump’s video-recorded deposition taken last October for this case in which Trump vehemently denies Carroll’s rape allegations against him.

“She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is. It came out of the blue. She’s accusing me of rape – of raping her, the worst thing you can do, the worst charge. And you know it’s not true too. You’re a political operative also. You’re a disgrace. But she’s accusing me and so are you of rape, and it never took place,” Trump said on video, addressing Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan.

Trump stood by his social media posts published in 2019 and 2022 denying Carroll’s accusations and confirmed he personally wrote them.

At one point during the deposition, Trump held a well-known black and white photo of himself, E Jean Carroll, her former husband news anchor John Johnson, and Trump’s then-wife Ivana.

Trump recognized Johnson and recalled thinking he was good at his television job, but then mistook Carroll for his other ex-wife Marla Maples.

“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he said.

After the attorneys corrected him, Trump said the photo was blurry.

He acknowledged the photo suggests he met Carroll at least once but said it must have been very brief at an event and he does not remember or know her.

“I still don’t know this woman. I think she’s a whack job. I have no idea. I don’t know anything about this woman other than what I read in stories and what I hear. I know nothing about her,” the former president said.

“She’s a liar and she’s a sick person in my opinion, Really sick. Something wrong with her,” Trump said during another point in the deposition.

Haberman: Trump is personally bothered by the E. Jean Carroll case

Carroll’s attorney asked Trump about his comments regarding Carroll, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff all not being “his type.”

He stood by the statements each time he was asked. At one point he said, “the only different between me and other people is I’m honest.”

He also told Carroll’s attorney she’s not his type. “You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either to be honest,” Trump said.

He also said he felt like he had a right to insult the women who’ve accused him falsely.

“I don’t want to be insulting but when people accuse me of something I think I have a right to be insulting because they’re insulting me,” Trump said.

The jury watched Trump view the “Access Hollywood” tape during his deposition. He didn’t appear to noticeably react as it was played.

When asked about the tape he said it’s already been “fully litigated” and, “it’s locker room talk, I don’t know, it’s just the way people talk.”

Former local news anchor Carol Martin testified Thursday that she remembers Carroll confiding in her soon after the alleged assault by Trump in the mid-1990s.

Martin testified under direct examination that she didn’t remember when exactly it happened, but she knew it was some time while the two were working at the same cable network between 1994 and 1996.

By Martin’s account the two friends had finished taping their respective shows and Carroll asked if she could come over Martin’s home near the studio. They talked in her kitchen for about an hour, Martin testified, and Carroll was “frenzied.”

Carroll’s “effect was anxious and excitable, but she can be that way sometimes so that part wasn’t as different but what she was saying didn’t make any sense at first.” The conversation was not linear, Carroll started her account saying, “You won’t believe what happened to me the other night,” Martin recalled.

“And I didn’t know what to expect,” Martin said she felt at the time. Carroll repeatedly said, “Trump attacked me,” according to Martin.

“I think she said ‘he pinned me’ and I still didn’t know what she meant,” Martin testified.

Martin testified that she told Carroll she shouldn’t tell anyone her story. “Because it was Donald Trump and he had a lot of attorneys and I thought he would bury her is what I told her,” Martin said.

“I have questioned myself more times than not over the years. I am not proud that that’s what I told her in truth but she didn’t contest,” Martin added.

During cross-examination, Tacopina read through a series of messages Martin has sent friends, many to Carroll, speaking negatively about Trump for years since he first ran for the presidency.

Martin testified that as “very liberal feminist women,” they frequently discussed politics including their dislike for Trump. “We would often talk about ways to change the climate or work on issues of interest to us,” Martin testified.

Tacopina also read the jury several messages Martin sent to friends and family about Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump that appeared to criticize Carroll. “She’s gonna sue when adult victims of rape law is passed in New York State or something. WTF that’s the defamation case and DOJ oversight or something. It’s gone to another level and not something I can relate to. For her, sadly, I think this quest has become a lifestyle,” Martin wrote in one text.

Martin responded in court that at the time she sent the messages she was dealing with serious matters in her own personal life that affected her feelings toward Carroll’s situation. She testified that the texts do not reflect her current feelings.

A marketing expert commissioned by Carroll testified it would take up to $2.7 million to run an effective marketing campaign to repair her reputation just from the damage of Trump’s October 12, 2022, comments denying her allegations.

Northwestern University Professor Ashlee Humphreys said that Trump’s statement at issue in this trial reached somewhere between 13.7 and 18 million impressions.

Humphreys and a team of researchers evaluated the post first published on Truth Social and how it spread across mediums like other social media platforms, websites and cable and network broadcast television.

In a series of calculations Humphreys said about 21% of the people who viewed the statement in some capacity – about 3.7 to 5.6 million people – likely believed Trump. The analysis did not consider the effects of previous statements Trump made about Carroll.

On cross examination Humphreys acknowledged that she did not consider damage done to Trump by Carroll’s statements against him.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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April 12, 2021
Trump legal team will look to challenge ‘every potential issue’ once indictment is unsealed | CNN Politics

Washington
CNN
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Donald Trump’s legal team will look to challenge “every potential issue” in his indictment once the charges are unsealed, an attorney for the former president said Sunday.

“We’re not doing anything at the arraignment because that would be showmanship and nothing more because we haven’t even seen the indictment yet. We will take the indictment, we will dissect it, the team will look at every – every – potential issue that we will be able to challenge and we will challenge it,” Joe Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Tacopina and other Trump lawyers have done several TV interviews in anticipation of the former President’s first appearance in court Tuesday, when he will learn the charges that the Manhattan grand jury has approved against him.

At times, the lawyers have vowed to ask for the charges to be dismissed. But the full slate of charges still aren’t known. And crucially, a judge will ultimately determine if the law is sound enough for the case to move forward to trial.

Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Sunday, “We can speculate on what evidence we think they may or may not have, but even with the indictment published, we really will not know what the district attorney’s evidence is and what they would present at trial.”

Vance’s team investigated the case but did not charge it, leaving it under the purview of his successor, Alvin Bragg.

Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels in late October 2016, days before the presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier.

Trump has denied the affair.

The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case.

Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday that the statute of limitations may be passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.

“They’re not false entries. But assuming they were, they’re misdemeanors way beyond the statute of limitations, so they had to cobble them together to try and get a felony,” he said.

Tacopina on Sunday also said a request to move the case to a different New York City borough isn’t on the table yet for Trump’s legal team.

“There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct Cy Vance’s comments to NBC.

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April 12, 2021
What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance | CNN Politics

CNN
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Donald Trump, the first former president in history to face criminal charges, is heading to New York Monday for an expected arraignment on Tuesday after being indicted last week by a Manhattan grand jury.

The expected voluntary surrender of a former president and 2024 White House candidate will be a unique affair in more ways than one – both for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York courthouse where he’ll be arraigned and for a nation watching to see how it’ll shake up the GOP presidential primary.

The former president has remained “surprisingly calm,” spending the weekend in Florida playing golf and mulling how to use it to boost his campaign, CNN reported Sunday night, after an indictment that caught him and his advisers “off guard.”

Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, CNN has reported, but the indictment remains under seal.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Trump and his allies have already attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – and an advertised Tuesday night speech back at Mar-a-Lago will likely given Trump more opportunity to claim he’s being political persecuted.

Here is what we know about the expected arraignment.

Trump left Florida shortly after noon ET on Monday, and is scheduled to land at New York’s LaGuardia airport around 3 p.m. ET, according to a source familiar with his plans. The former president will stay at Trump Tower Monday night and is expected to depart New York immediately after Tuesday’s arraignment to head back to Florida, the source said.

But even before Trump’s appearance, his presence will be felt in the Manhattan courthouse Tuesday, as all trials and most other court activity is being halted before he is slated to arrive.

The Secret Service, the New York Police Department and the court officers are coordinating security for Trump’s expected appearance. The Secret Service is scheduled to accompany Trump in the early afternoon to the district attorney’s office, which is in the same building as the courthouse.

Trump will be booked by the investigators, which includes taking his fingerprints. Ordinarily, a mug shot would be taken. But sources familiar with the preparations were uncertain as to whether there would be a mugshot – because Trump’s appearance is widely known and authorities were concerned about the improper leaking of the photo, which would be a violation of state law.

Typically, after defendants are arrested, they are booked and held in cells near the courtroom before they are arraigned. But that won’t happen with Trump. Once the former president is finished being processed, he’ll be taken through a back set of hallways and elevators to the floor where the courtroom is located. He’ll then come out to a public hallway to walk into the courtroom.

Trump is not expected to be handcuffed, as he will be surrounded by armed federal agents for his protection.

“Obviously, this is different. This has never happened before. I have never had Secret Service involved in an arraignment before at 100 Centre Street,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “All the Tuesday stuff is still very much up in the air, other than the fact that we will very loudly and proudly say not guilty.”

By the afternoon, Trump is expected to be brought to the courtroom, where the indictment will be unsealed and he will formally face the charges. After he is arraigned, Trump will almost certainly be released on his own recognizance. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that conditions could be set on his travel.

Ordinarily, a defendant who is released would walk out the front doors, but Secret Service will want to limit the time and space where Trump is in public. So instead, once the court hearing is over, Trump is expected to walk again through the public hallway and into the back corridors to the district attorney’s office, back to where his motorcade will be waiting.

Then he’ll head to the airport so he can get back to Mar-a-Lago, where he’s scheduled an event that evening to speak publicly.

Several media outlets, including CNN, have asked a New York judge to unseal the indictment and for permission to broadcast Trump’s expected appearance in the courtroom on Tuesday.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are among the outlets making the request.

The news organizations are asking for a “limited number of photographers, videographers, and radio journalists to be present at the arraignment,” and said in the letter that they are making “this limited request for audio-visual coverage in order to ensure that the operations of the Court will not be disrupted in any way.”

If the judge does not grant the media outlets’ unsealing request, it is expected that the indictment will be made public when Trump appears in court.

Judge Juan Merchan is no stranger to Trump’s orbit.

Merchan, an acting New York Supreme Court justice, has sentenced Trump’s close confidant Allen Weisselberg to prison, presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial and overseen former adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal fraud case.

Merchan does not stand for disruptions or delays, attorneys who have appeared before him told CNN, and he’s known to maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw considerable attention.

Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore said during an interview Friday on CNN that Merchan was “not easy” on him when he tried a case before him but that he will likely be fair.

“I’ve tried a case in front of him before. He could be tough. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be something that’s going to change his ability to evaluate the facts and the law in this case,” Parlatore said.

Tacopina told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday that the former president will plead not guilty. His team “will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge, and we will challenge,” Tacopina said.

The Trump team’s court strategy could center around challenging the case because it may rely on business record entries that prosecutors tie to hush money payments to Daniels seven years ago, beyond the statute of limitations for a criminal case. Tacopina suggested in TV interviews Sunday the statute of limitations may have passed, and said the Trump businesses didn’t make false entries.

Trump’s legal team isn’t currently considering asking to move the case to a different New York City borough, Tacopina said. “There’s been no discussion of that whatsoever,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in another interview Sunday. “It’s way too premature to start worrying about venue changes until we really see the indictment and grapple with the legal issues.”

Trump’s political advisers over the weekend were actively discussing how to best campaign off the indictment they have portrayed as a political hoax and witch hunt, according to sources close to Trump.

His team has spent the last several days presenting the former president with polls showing him with a growing lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently considered Trump’s biggest 2024 rival, in a head-to-head match up. And his team says it has raised more than $5 million dollars since he was indicted Thursday.

Despite the initial shock of the indictment, Trump has remained surprisingly calm and focused in the days ahead of his court appearance, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported.

The former president has seemingly saved his rage for his social media site, escalating his attacks on Bragg and leveling threats.

Many of Trump’s allies, critics and likely opponents in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race have similarly attacked Bragg before and after the indictment.

But former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced his presidential campaign on Sunday, doubled down on his call for Trump to drop out of the race now that he is facing criminal charges.

“The office is more important than any individual person. So for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction,” Hutchinson said in an interview on ABC News. “He needs to be able to concentrate on his due process.”

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April 12, 2021