Former US President Donald Trump’s private airplane known as Trump Force One is parked on the tarmac at the Palm Beach International Airport on March 31, 2023 in West Palm Beach, Florida. –
Giorgio Viera | AFP | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump prepared to fly to New York’s La Guardia Airport on Monday to surrender to face criminal charges related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump is due to be arraigned Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, where a grand jury indicted him Thursday.
“I will be leaving Mar-a-Lago on Monday at 12 noon, heading to Trump Tower in New York,” he wrote in a Truth Social post from his residence in Palm Beach, Florida, late Sunday night. “On Tuesday morning I will be going to, believe it or not, the Courthouse.”
“America was not supposed to be this way!” Trump added.
Trump has said he will give a speech Tuesday night about his criminal case after he returns to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
A small group of Trump supporters gathered Monday morning outside the club, waiting for his departure.
In Manhattan, the New York Police Department and other law enforcement agencies continued preparations for Trump’s arrival and potential protests.
On Sunday afternoon, news camera crews already had set up posts outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and outside the courthouse, located less than four miles due south of Trump’s residence.
Sources have told NBC News that Trump faces about 30 counts of document fraud in the indictment. It came after the grand jury heard multiple witnesses since January testify about a $130,000 payment Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
The indictment has not been unsealed, so it is not known whether those counts are the entirety of the case.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office is prosecuting Trump, has not made any public statement about the charges other than confirming the indictment was filed.
A court document dated March 30, 2023 shows the order authorizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to publicly disclose that former U.S. President Donald Trump was indicted, following a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Manhattan District Court
Cohen’s payment to Daniels was designed to keep her from talking to the media about her claim that she had sex with Trump one time in 2006, months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron.
Trump denies having sex with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. He also denies any criminal wrongdoing.
But he reimbursed Cohen with multiple payments, which in total far exceeded the $130,000. The extra amount Trump gave Cohen was at least in part to cover the income taxes the lawyer would have owed for getting the money from him.
The reimbursement was recorded as legal expenses in Trump Organization business records.
Under New York law, misclassifying the nature of business expenses in official records is a misdemeanor. But it can be charged as a felony if the misstatement was done to cover up or hide another crime.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal criminal charges, which included a campaign finance violation that was related to the payment to Daniels. He admitted Trump directed the payment to prevent Daniels from making her claim public, which could have potentially harmed his chances of winning the election.
Trump’s campaign for the 2024 presidential election has leveraged the renewed attention to rake in money from the former president’s supporters. It has raised more than $5 million since Trump was indicted, NBC News reported, confirming an earlier report by Axios.
As Trump tries to secure the GOP presidential nomination for a third time, his legal risks go beyond the hush money case. He faces three other criminal investigations.
One, by a state prosecutor in Atlanta, is focused on efforts by him and his allies to get Georgia officials to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden in that state.
The Department of Justice is investigating Trump for his attempt to reverse Biden’s national election win, by, among other things, pressuring his Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to confirm the Electoral College results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. That probe also is examining whether Trump committed crimes related to the riot by a mob of his supporters who invaded the Capitol that day.
The DOJ separately is investigating Trump for potential crimes in retaining hundreds of government records at Mar-a-Lago, some of them highly classified, after he left the White House. It is also probing whether he obstructed justice in refusing to return the documents when authorities requested them.
The Washington Post on Sunday reported that “federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence” that after Trump’s advisers were sent a subpoena last May demanding the return of documents bearing classified markings, “Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession.”
Trump has denied committing crimes related to any of the probes, which he argues are motivated by a desire to harm him politically.
