Donald Trump plans
to deliver a speech after his arraignment on Tuesday as one of his lawyers said
he will move to dismiss the hush money charges against him, telegraphing the
ex-president’s early strategy. “I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming
because there’s no law that fits this,” Joe Tacopina said on CNN’s State of the
Union. Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign announced that the ex-president will
give a speech Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago, showing how he is trying to use
his legal woes to rally supporters at the same time he fights the charges in
court. Trump will be formally arrested and arraigned Tuesday after he was
indicted by a grand jury last week on charges related to the alleged payment of
hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, though the exact nature of those
charges are not yet known. The former president will plead not guilty, Tacopina
said on Sunday.
Tacopina added that
he hoped that Tuesday would go “as smoothly and quickly as possible” so that
Trump can mount a spirited defence to the charges. “He’s gearing up for a
battle,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “We believe it is a political
persecution.” Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said on NBC’s
Meet the Press Sunday that he expects “the court will want this to move
quickly”. The case against Trump, who is running to be Republican candidate for
president in 2024, comes after a grand jury in New York heard evidence from
witnesses including Michael Cohen, his erstwhile lawyer. Cohen has claimed he
was ordered in 2016 to pay $130,000 to Daniels to cover up an alleged affair.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found that 50 per cent of Americans
think the charges against Trump are serious, while 35 per cent believe they are
not serious. Nearly 90 per cent of Democrats think Trump should have been
charged in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation, while 62
per cent of Republicans say he should not have been. The announcement of the
indictment has shaken the presidential race and sent the US into uncharted
territory, making Trump the first ex-president to be indicted. Republican
analysts and members of his campaign expect the charges can help him with
voters. The Trump campaign’s pollster John McLaughlin on Saturday released a
survey conducted since the indictment showing Trump with a 30 point lead over
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, his anticipated main rival, a lead from to 12
points in January. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a moderate
Republican, said on Sunday he would join the race for president and called for
Trump to drop out of the race now that he is indicted. “If we’re looking at the
presidency and the future of our country, then we don’t need that distraction
and he needs to be able to concentrate on the legal issues that he faces,” he
said.