What to Expect When Trump Is Charged in the Documents Case on Tuesday
Mr. Trump has said the hearing will be at 3 p.m. His team has been discussing security arrangements and procedures for the event with the authorities, and it is not yet clear how certain details will be handled.
Criminal defendants who are taken into custody before an initial court appearance are often handcuffed, fingerprinted and photographed for a mug shot. In April, however, authorities in New York only took Mr. Trump’s fingerprints and did not handcuff or photograph him.
It is also not yet clear which judge will oversee the hearing.
Mr. Trump’s case has been assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who earlier handled a lawsuit he filed challenging the F.B.I.’s court-authorized search of his Florida estate and club, Mar-a-Lago. That search came in August, after Mr. Trump had not fully cooperated with a subpoena requiring him to give back all the documents with classification markings that he still had.
Judge Cannon was appointed by Mr. Trump days after he lost the election in November 2020. She surprised legal experts across the ideological divide last year by intervening with various rulings favorable to Mr. Trump, disrupting the documents investigation until a conservative appeals court rebuked her, saying she never had legal authority to intervene. Her assignment to the criminal case was random, the chief clerk for the Southern District of Florida has said.
Mr. Trump never appeared before Judge Cannon during the earlier lawsuit, so if she handles Tuesday’s hearing, it would bring them face to face. But such hearings are often instead overseen by a magistrate judge. On Tuesday, that could be the magistrate who works with Judge Cannon, Bruce Reinhart — who signed the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago — or it could be whatever magistrate judge is on duty at the Miami courthouse.
Source: The New York Times
