The former President of the United States, Donald Trump, is in Police custody and he is being processed at the Manhattan district attorney’s office ahead of his arraignment.
He is officially the first President to face criminal charges when he appears in court following his historic indictment.
He was indicted for his role in paying hush money to a porn star weeks before the 2016 election.
Scores of reporters and observers gathered near the lower Manhattan courthouse, as police arranged barricades.
City officials are prepared for protests, and one of Trump’s strongest allies in Washington, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), spoke at a rally.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, triggered in part by a series of Wall Street Journal articles in 2018, is the longest-running of several active criminal probes of Trump.
Trump’s legal team has said the former president will plead not guilty and challenge the charges.
The former president, who has vowed to continue his 2024 bid, is slated to fly back to Florida after the arraignment and speak tonight at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump faces an array of civil lawsuits and criminal investigations beyond the New York charges on which he is being arraigned on Tuesday. In all the outstanding cases, Trump has denied wrongdoing.
In Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. Ms. Willis, a Democrat, has said she is nearing charging decisions.
In Washington, a Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, is overseeing a criminal investigation into the handling of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida.
That probe has expanded to include a criminal investigation into possible obstruction and other crimes.
Prosecutors have questioned dozens of witnesses, including several lawyers for Trump.
Smith is also conducting a separate inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss, a probe that a flurry of aggressive steps in March suggests is advancing.
Prosecutors have subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, among others, setting the stage for court fights that could take months to resolve.
Trump has asserted executive privilege in an effort to prevent Messrs. Pence and Meadows from testifying.
He also faces a number of civil suits, including those brought by some Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers seeking to hold the former president accountable for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children and his company, alleging they engaged in a decade-long scheme to falsely value their assets and generated $250 million in ill-gotten gains. All have denied wrongdoing, and a trial is set for October.
E. Jean Carroll, a New York writer and journalist, sued Trump in a New York state court in late 2019, saying the president lied and defamed her when he denied raping her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s.
While a federal appeals court in Washington is reviewing whether the president’s statements were undertaken in the scope of his job as president, Ms. Carroll brought a follow-on state lawsuit last year, which is set to go to trial in April.
Meanwhile opponents of Donald Trump banged drums, blew whistles and chanted “Lock him up” ahead of the former president’s expected arraignment in New York.
Protesters lined up along barricades at a park near the courthouse. Supporters on the other side of the park met the opponents’ shouts with a dueling chant: “USA! USA!”
Maryellen Novak, a New Yorker who works in marketing and communications, was among those lined up along the barricades. On this bright spring day, she held a sign reading, “The sun is shining on Trump’s indictment.”
“We wanted to give Trump a proper welcome and demonstrate and remind him no one is above the law,” Ms. Novak said. She added the she is looking forward to seeing the full range of the indictment.
Denise Eugene, a 66-year-old retired social worker, came with a sign saying “Trump’s depravity is a danger to us all.”
She was wearing ear plugs because she said she spent most of the morning blowing her whistle to show how tired she was of Trump.
“He’s a malignant tumor for this country,” Ms. Eugene said.
