Joe Tacopina, the defense attorney for former U.S. President Donald Trump, revealed that Trump will not have his hands handcuffed when he surrenders to authorities next week in New York to face criminal charges, as per an agreement reached between the defense team and prosecutors in Manhattan. Tacopina stated that he expects the arrest to be a mere routine procedure on Tuesday, when Trump appears in court to confront an indictment following an investigation by a grand jury into payments made to silence porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.
Tacopina added, "I don’t know how this will go; there is no precedent for how to try a former president of the United States in a criminal court," noting that Trump and his defense team were surprised by the indictment news. He continued, "Initially, we were all in shock; we couldn’t believe they would actually go forward with this, because there is no crime."
Meanwhile, former Vice President Mike Pence remarked that the indictment of Donald Trump sends a "terrible" message to the world about the American justice system and will encourage authoritarian rulers to abuse their power. In an interview, Pence stated that "there are dictatorial and authoritarian rulers around the world who will use this to justify their abuse of what they call their own justice system." Pence served as Trump’s vice president and is a potential rival for the Republican nomination in next year’s presidential race.
