New York

Over the weekend Donald Trump set off an international maelstrom of media attention when he announced he would be “arrested on Tuesday”.Like so many of Trump’s certain proclamations, it proved to be throughly wrong, and the grand jury weighing whether to charge Trump over payments to an adult film star is now unlikely to deliver its verdict until next week.Trump’s declaration, however, did succeed in creating a week-long spectacle outside the Manhattan criminal court, which is now protected by metal barriers and police amid a widespread tightening of security in New York.On Monday a small group of Trump supporters – estimates place the number at between five and 20 – and much, much larger groups of journalists flooded to the court, in the south of the island of Manhattan.Those on the right hailed the smattering of people holding pro-Trump signs as a bold show of support for the twice-impeached, legally besieged former US president.But by that measure, support had evaporated on Thursday. There was not a single Trump supporter or protester – a small group of anti-Trumpers had also been present earlier in the week – outside the court. Only the journalists, from all the big TV stations and a lot of the smaller ones, remained, sitting looking glum in sheeting New York rain.Outside the court, which has found itself the subject of so much global attention this week, loomed behind waist-high metal barricades.The absence of Trump supporters was made to feel even more pronounced by the entirely empty protest pen that police had set up on Monday. The small circular area, which brought to mind a sort of animal petting area common to county fairs, was forlorn and redundant under the gray sky, a real-life rebuttal to the adage “if you build it they will come”.The courthouse itself is a sprawling 15 floor concrete building, spanning an entire city block looking like a nod to Soviet-era architecture. Thoroughly outshone by the ornate New York county supreme court and the gold leaf-roofed Thurgood Marshall United States courthouse, planted next to each other a hundred yards south, dozens of cameras nonetheless remained trained on it on Thursday.Trump has said he’d like to be handcuffed when, or if, he is arraigned and arrested at the court. The former television host, who inherited his father’s housing business, is being investigated for his role in paying $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who says the pair had sex. Trump says they did not.The one-term president’s determination to turn his arraignment into a “spectacle”, however, is likely to be ruined by the scaffolding and green plywood that is in place across the entire span of the building, obscuring the main entrance. If he ever is indicted and taken to court, the camera crews outside – there are at least two dozen – will be lucky if they get an image of Trump at all.There was a small assortment of NYPD equipment in front of the court, including a towable floodlight on each corner and, on the street behind the building, two big vans, but neither represented a striking visual.With no interested parties present when the Guardian visited, there was certainly little worth filming. Five police officers were standing around not doing much at a gap in the barricades, while on a corner two more officers were discussing whether to have pizza or a sandwich for lunch.They settled on pizza.On Thursday it emerged that the grand jury hearing the case would only return to Trump’s case on Monday, pushing back any potential arrest. Until then the barricades, the bored police officers, and the bored journalists will remain in place.A week that began with a bang, and with some of Trump’s supporters getting a day out in New York, appears to have thoroughly fizzled out. More

Donald Trump has cheered the news that a former adviser to Michael Cohen will testify before a Manhattan grand jury investigating the ex-president’s alleged role in a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Robert J Costello, a one-time legal adviser to former Trump attorney Cohen, was scheduled to appear before the grand jury on Monday and expected to give testimony “attacking the credibility of Cohen’s statements”, the Associated Press reported.Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges involving $130,000 paid to Daniels close to election day in 2016. Daniels claims she had sex with the former president in 2006, an allegation Trump denies.Trump said on Saturday he would be “arrested on Tuesday” – a claim for which sources close to the 76-year-old said he had no evidence – but then offered a more buoyant outlook after news of Costello’s scheduled appearance.“Just reported that the most important witness to go before the New York City grand jury, a highly respected lawyer who once represented convicted felon, jailbird and serial fake storyteller and liar, Michael Cohen, will be doing so tomorrow afternoon,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.“The information he will present will supposedly be conclusive and irrefutable! Witch hunt!!!”Costello, who has represented the Trump confidants Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani, offered to represent Cohen in 2018 as he faced charges related to the Daniels payment. The pair discussed the case, the New York Times reported, but the relationship soured after Cohen began to criticize and implicate Trump.The AP reported that Costello recently contacted a Trump lawyer, claiming he had information that contradicted Cohen’s account and could prove exculpatory for Trump.The lawyer brought it to the attention of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who last week subpoenaed Costello’s law firm for records and invited him to testify.There was more good news for Trump on Monday when Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, his closest rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, addressed the likely indictment for the first time.Trump allies had called for DeSantis to speak out. Speaking to reporters at a college in Panama City, the governor mocked the notion that hush money payments to a porn star might be seen as indictable conduct. He also repeated an antisemitic dogwhistle.DeSantis said Bragg “like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponise their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety”.George Soros, a Hungarian American progressive financier and philanthropist, is a boogeyman for Republicans and a regular target for antisemitic invective.DeSantis mentioned “Soros-funded prosecutors” five times in a two-minute answer.Throughout Sunday, Trump published a flurry of all-caps posts, railing against perceived injustice.Using a term short for “Republicans in name only”, one post complained of persecution by “COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS, RINOS AND LOSERS”. Several posts attacked Cohen.While Trump has focused on Bragg, Cohen and others, his lawyers have focused on a defense strategy.Outside counsel – Joe Tacopina and Susan Necheles – have reasoned that a hush money case centered on campaign finance violations could be weak after a similar prosecution against the Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards failed in 2012.If the indictment alleges the Daniels payment violated campaign finance laws, Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that it fails the “irrespective test” posed by the Edwards case: that Trump would have paid Daniels irrespective of his campaign, to avoid embarrassment because he was a public figure.Trump may face an uphill struggle with those arguments, given that having “mixed motives” to protect himself personally and to protect his campaign could leave him liable. The timing of the payments also suggests an urgency to pay before election day.There is also the matter of Trump’s own comments on the Edwards case. In 2012, he told Fox News “a lot of very good lawyers have told me that the government doesn’t have a good case” against Edwards.As former New York prosecutor Ronn Blitzer wrote for Law and Crime, “that … sentence undermines Trump’s claim that he was relying on Cohen as his attorney to know the law to steer him in the right direction” over the Daniels payment, “and that he didn’t direct Cohen to break the law”.“[Trump] said during the Edwards case that he spoke to ‘a lot of very good lawyers’ about these very issues, which would mean he was aware of the relevant laws,” Blitzer said.Trump’s legal team is also expected to argue that when Daniels tried to sell her story in 2011 she was told to “leave Trump alone – forget the story”, thereby proving her silence was desired long before Trump ran for president.Trump’s lawyers made those arguments when Necheles urged Bragg to drop the case, the Guardian previously reported. But all signs indicate Bragg will move ahead in an unprecedented indictment of a former president – who is also running to return to the Oval Office. More

The Manhattan district attorney widely expected to bring an indictment against Donald Trump this week has vowed that his staff will not be intimidated after the former US president called for his supporters to protest any action against him.Trump triggered a flurry of frantic headlines and statements from his political allies on Saturday when he posted a message on social media claiming he was set to be arrested this Tuesday on charges of hush payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels.An indictment from the office of Alvin Bragg is widely expected this week but officials, and Trump’s lawyers, have clarified they have no certainty as to timing or what actually will happen in court.But Bragg sent an email to his office, obtained by Politico, that did not mention Trump by name but that did appear to address the case, including widespread security fears around lower Manhattan courts in the wake of any indictment.“As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate,” Bragg wrote.He added: “We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York… Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.”On Saturday afternoon, Trump supporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago home and country club in Florida to show their support. Trump later boarded a private jet to fly from Palm Beach to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to attend a college wrestling tournament.Trump made no mention of a criminal indictment and arrest at the Tulsa event. He appeared alongside Senator Markwayne Mullin, congratulated the wrestlers and posed for pictures with supporters, according to pictures published by Tulsa World.Trump and Mullin sat in a boxed-off area and stayed for all 10 matches, while Mullin, a former wrestler, explained the finer points of the sport. Trump talked with fans between matches, but reporters were kept away.Speaking before Trump’s arrival, Mullin appeared to compare the likely charges against Trump with unproven and largely discredited claims that former secretary of state Hilary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, committed criminal security breaches while she served in the Obama administration.“They’ve been after the president (Trump) since Day 1,” Mullin was reported to have remarked. “Everybody sees this for what it is. It’s not what this country is about. We had an opportunity to get after Hilary, … and we didn’t.”“The [Manhattan] district attorney needs to concentrate on putting bad guys in jail,” he added.It was Trump’s first public appearance since he said in a social media post that he would be arrested over the payments made to Daniels, a month before the 2016 presidential election. If any indictment is handed down, it is likely to claim the payments were an illegal use of campaign finances. Trump received a standing ovation in Tulsa and held up a defiant fist as he arrived at the wrestling event while fans cheered. Earlier on Saturday, Trump had urged his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” in comments made on his Truth Social platform.Insider has reported that the grand jury looking at the case may still listen to one further witness on Monday, raising the prospect of any indictment coming later in the week.Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney and “fixer” who was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, said that Trump’s comments signaled a desire for “another violent clash”.“It’s eerily similar to the battle cry that he put out just prior to the Jan 6 insurrection, you know, especially including the call, you know, for protest,” Cohen told MSNBC. Cohen added that “it would have been smart for Donald to write ‘peaceful protest’, but he doesn’t want a peaceful protest”.Cohen also theorized that Trump would see his arrest as a potential boost to his 2024 presidential campaign as he frequently has sought to portray himself as at the center of a political “witch hunt”. More