According to a lawyer for Donald Trump, if he is charged, the former president will willingly turn himself in to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. “We will follow normal protocol if it gets to that point,” Joe Tacopina said.
There won’t be a showdown at Mar-a-Lago with the Secret Service and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, he said in an earlier interview with The New York Daily News.
There have been concerns over whether Trump, who infamously refused to accept his loss in the 2020 election, would object to traveling to Manhattan to answer for his actions.
But, experts see little benefit in trying to block extradition from Florida, and defendants in white-collar cases typically have the option of turning themselves in to police at the Manhattan District Attorney’s downtown headquarters, where fingerprints are taken and mugshots are taken.
The former president will undoubtedly be accompanied by Secret Service personnel during his arrest and court appearances.
The District Attorney’s office is looking into a $130,000 hush-money payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, said under oath that he paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election at the order of Trump.
Following the opening of a criminal investigation by the Manhattan US attorney’s office, Cohen entered a guilty plea in 2018 to five felonies related to the payment, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and violations of campaign financing laws.
Cohen appeared twice this week before a grand jury and has been a major witness in the DA’s office probe. According to Tacopina, the defense has not received any notification that an indictment has been approved and submitted as of late Friday afternoon.
