It appears that rumors of Trump’s imminent arrest may have been greatly exaggerated.
On Saturday, Trump posted the following to his Truth Social account:
However, his attorney has confirmed that Trump’s legal team has received no word from the DA regarding an arrest, let alone a specific day for the arrest.
Donald Trump said he expects to turn himself in on Tuesday in the Manhattan district attorney’s hush-money case — a date his own lead defense attorney could not confirm.Lead defense attorney Susan Necheles said the Trump defense team had received no information from the DA’s office that Trump would be “arrested” — his word — on Tuesday or on any other specific day, though she was careful not to directly contradict her clients’ Truth Social post.”President Trump is basing this on press reports,” Necheles told Insider of the Tuesday date.”This is a political prosecution and the DA leaks things to the press instead of communicating to the lawyers as they should,” Necheles said.Necheles did not specify which “press report” Trump might be looking at. There has been no reporting of a specific date for Trump to surrender to Manhattan authorities.She could not confirm if Trump was referring to a Fox News report from Friday. The report said that the district attorney’s office ‘asked for a meeting’ with law enforcement, in order to plan for an indictment that a court source told Fox “they are anticipating” next week.
Apparently, the DA is not in regular contact with Trump’s team, which she notes is abnormal.
Business Insider continues:
“We’re all reading tea leaves because they refuse to communicate,” she told Insider. “It’s been over a week and I haven’t gotten any information from them, which is not normal,” she said.”In normal, run-of-the-mill cases, they’ll be talking to us about what date they expect to turn in an indictment. They’ll be saying ‘we’ll let you know,'” she added. “That’s the normal conversation you would have with prosecutors.”
There may be a reason for this silence (in addition to the partisan one):
The Manhattan grand jury has been hearing witness testimony since mid-January, including on Monday and Wednesday from Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, a star witness in the prosecution’s case.But there are no credible accounts to emerge publicly that the grand jury has voted to indict Trump or anyone else, a necessary first step that would then lead the DA to contact Trump’s attorneys and negotiate his surrender and arraignment.
It seems that—at the very least—Trump went off half-cocked (again), and it’s yet another sharp contrast between him and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whom Trump supporters have been demanding respond . . . to the apparently baseless rumors of a Trump arrest on Tuesday.
Even if there is an indictment, there will be no arrest, no dawn raid, no CNN cameras, no perp walk. Trump’s legal team has stated that he will surrender to face charges.
Former President Donald Trump will surrender to face criminal charges if indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, his lawyer said Friday evening.The lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, spoke on the heels of a report by WNBC that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are preparing security arrangements for the possibility that Trump will be indicted as early as next week.“Will follow normal procedures if it gets to that point,” Tacopina told CNBC when asked what Trump would do if that possibility becomes reality.
Arresting a former president, particularly one who is currently a candidate for his party’s nomination, is a huge break from precedent and is absolutely politically motivated (not to mention, in this specific case, “legally pathetic“). It’s also a can of worms that Democrats will regret opening if an indictment does occur.
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