Joe Tacopina, a defense attorney for former US President Donald Trump, said Trump will not have his hands tied when he surrenders to authorities next week in New York to face criminal charges, under the terms of an agreement reached between his defense team and prosecutors in Manhattan.
Tacupina said in an interview that he expected the arrest to be just a routine procedure on Tuesday when Trump goes to court to face indictment following a grand jury investigation into the gag payment of pornographic actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
“I don’t know how this is going to go,” Tacubina said. “There is no reference on how a former president of the United States could be tried in a criminal court.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office could not be reached to respond to the attorney’s comments.
Tacupina said Trump and his defense team were stunned by the news of the indictment. “At first we were all shocked. We couldn’t believe that they would actually go ahead with this procedure because there was no crime,” he added.