Former President Donald Trump will not refuse to surrender if the Manhattan district attorney criminally indicts him, his lawyer told the Daily News Friday.
“There won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office,” Joe Tacopina said.
DA Alvin Bragg is believed to be on the cusp of nearing a charging decision in his office’s long-running investigation into Trump, his business dealings, and the infamous hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
If Trump is charged, he must surrender to New York authorities and appear in court to enter a plea to the charges. A judge could theoretically agree to conduct the hearing remotely, but no criminal defendants are being arraigned virtually at present, according to Lucian Chalfen from the Office of Court Administration.
DA staffers met with members of the NYPD’s intelligence bureau on Thursday for a preliminary meeting to address security concerns ahead of the possible indictment, according to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting who asked to remain anonymous.
The NYPD is working on a security plan with the Secret Service, the lead agency that protects dignitaries, ahead of the potential indictment, police sources told The News.
The NYPD did not respond to a request seeking official comment about the security preparations. Manhattan DA spokeswoman Emily Tuttle declined to comment.
Grand jury proceedings are confidential, and it is not known whether the group impaneled in January will vote to indict Trump. If it does, the criminal case will mark the first against a former president in American history.
Sources connected to the investigation, running on about four years, say Bragg is considering charging Trump with crimes related to how he and his business classified reimbursement checks to his former fixer Michael Cohen — who paid off Daniels — and concealed them to hide further wrongdoing.
On Wednesday, Cohen concluded his testimony before a grand jury hearing evidence in the probe. He said every one of the engaged jurors asked him a question and added that he was “certain” he’d provided the most comprehensive account of the 2016 hush money deal with Daniels, for which he served federal prison time.
“I’m relieved that my role is now, for the time being, over. I have complied with every request that was asked of me by the district attorney’s office,” Cohen said.
An adult film actor and author, Daniels claims she slept with Trump in 2006 at a Lake Tahoe golf tournament. She’s taken issue with the encounter being described as “an affair,” testifying at lawyer Michael Avenatti’s unrelated trial last year, “I don’t consider getting cornered coming out of a bathroom to be an affair.”
In Cohen’s 2018 federal case, prosecutors detailed how he negotiated paying Daniels off as she prepared to go public with details of the tryst. Cohen admitted in his guilty plea that he made the payment “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump, who he famously described as Individual 1, for the “principal purpose” of influencing the election outcome.
After Trump was elected, Cohen billed the president and his family real estate business for hush money reimbursement, receiving it in monthly installment checks with interest, according to court records. Federal prosecutors said the checks to Cohen were falsely accounted in the Trump Organization’s books as “legal expenses.”
Trump has denied the sexual encounter with Daniels and has recently described himself as an extortion victim in relation to the hush payment, which Daniels denies.
Earlier this week, Tacopina said that Trump would not take the DA’s office up on an invitation to testify, a courtesy call that further fueled speculation that the investigation is wrapping up.
On Friday, Tacopina said Trump, who’s running for the White House for a third time, would find a way to use the potential criminal charges to his advantage.
“Most people would collapse under the weight of this,” Tacopina told The News. “He seems to turn everything into a positive and everything into a boost for his campaign, so I’m sure this will just join that long list of things that people think no one could overcome, but he will.”
