Defiant Trump announces Florida event just hours after Tuesday’s court appearance in New York
Former President Donald Trump announced he will speak from his home in Florida just hours after he appears in court in New York.
‘President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, will deliver remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, at 8:15PM EDT,’ reads a statement released by the former president Sunday.
The planned remarks will come shortly after Trump is scheduled to appear in a Manhattan courtroom for his arraignment at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, a process that is expected to take less than an hour.
Afterward, the former president plans to fly back to his Florida home to deliver his remarks, though experts say it is still unknown just how much Trump will be able to say about the unfolding case.
Manhattan Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is expected to oversee the arraignment, may move to put conditions on Trump’s release following the proceedings, which will ‘most likely’ include a gag order that would prevent him from publicly discussing the case.
‘I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,’ Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor, told Insider Friday.
Levin said Trump may be ‘very limited’ in what he is able to say, a reality that could hinder Trump’s aim to politically capitalize on the case.
‘This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,’ Levin said. ‘He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.’
The charges against Trump, which are currently under seal, are expected to be related to alleged ‘hush money’ payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels leading up to the 2016 election and how the payments were accounted for.