Donald Trump has been a lot of “firsts” when it comes to the presidency. Yesterday (March 30), he added another achievement to that list as he became the first former U.S. president in history to be indicted on criminal charges. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict the twice-impeached leader for misusing campaign finances to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels back in 2016. Tuesday (April 4) will mark the next step in the process as he’s set to be arraigned and have his mugshot taken by authorities.
While Trump has railed against the forthcoming charges, he isn’t planning to hide from the law. “Trump is not going to hole up in Mar-a-Lago,” his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, stated plainly today (March 31), according to The Washington Post. The former “Apprentice” star is reportedly flying to New York on Monday (April 3) in preparation for his arraignment on Tuesday. Part of the booking process includes having a mugshot and fingerprints taken.
Trump is currently a Florida resident living at his sprawling Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The indictment led his possible 2024 rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis, to declare that his administration wouldn’t assist in extraditing Trump to New York for him to be arraigned, calling the case a “weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.” See the governor’s tweet below.
After The New York Times broke yesterday that the grand jury had voted to indict Trump, the ex-president took to his social media site, Truth Social, to blast the decision. “These thugs and the radical left monsters have just INDICATED [sic] the 45th President of the United States of America,” he wrote. “This is an attack on our country the likes of which has never been seen before… The USA is now a third world nation, a nation in serious decline. So sad!” Read his full statements on the matter below.