Here’s how Trump’s day is expected to unfold

Later today, Donald Trump will become the first former US president in history to face criminal charges.

Although many details around his arraignment in New York are still unclear, this is what we know about how Trump’s day is expected to go.

The “Meet Our Team” page that was active as of Friday on the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office website is no longer working. 

The page provided biographies of some of the top prosecutors under District Attorney Alvin Bragg. A visit to the page Tuesday indicated it was “not found.” 

Former President Donald Trump has called for protests and has personally verbally attacked Bragg in recent weeks as the indictment appeared imminent. 

News outlets will not be allowed to broadcast former President Donald Trump’s arraignment today in a New York state court, a judge said Monday night, but he will allow some photographers to take pictures in the courtroom before the proceedings formally begin.

Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan rejected the request by several media organizations, including CNN, for permission to broadcast the historic proceedings. Trump’s arraignment — like most arraignments in the Manhattan courthouse — is a public proceeding, but news cameras are not usually allowed to broadcast from inside the courtroom.

However, the judge is allowing five pool photographers to take still photos at the beginning of the proceedings “until such time as they are directed to vacate the jury box by court personnel.”

Earlier on Monday, Trump’s lawyers urged the judge to reject the media’s request for live cameras in the courtroom. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office told the judge they didn’t have a position. 

The media outlets that tried to get cameras into the courtroom argued that “the gravity of this proceeding … and, consequently, the need for the broadest possible public access, cannot be overstated.” 

In his Monday night order, Merchan wrote that the media’s request to broadcast the arraignment was understandable, but that the news organizations’ interests in providing the broadest possible access to the proceedings must be weighed against “competing interests.”

In rejecting the request to broadcast the arraignment live on television, Merchan still wrote about the historical significance of the proceeding in stark terms. 

Donald Trump will officially become the first former president to face criminal charges Tuesday when he’s arraigned in a New York courtroom – an appearance that is expected to be quick and routine but represents a surreal and historic moment in US history.

Trump is set to arrive at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, where his arrest will be processed by the district attorney’s office and he will be brought to the courtroom to hear the charges against him.

News outlets will not be able to broadcast the arraignment live, a judge said Monday night, rejecting a request from several media organizations, including CNN. Five still photographers, however, will be allowed to take pictures of Trump and the courtroom before the hearing begins.

The indictment returned last week by a grand jury against Trump is also expected to be unsealed Tuesday, providing the public – and Trump’s legal team – with the first details about the specific charges he will face. The investigation stemmed from a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump is not expected to speak while in New York, but he is slated to fly back to Florida following his court appearance, and he will hold an event at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday evening that gives the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful a chance to respond to the charges.

While Trump’s comments will signal how he intends to fight the charges against him in the political arena, the former president is also preparing for the fight in court: He added a new attorney, Todd Blanche, to serve as lead counsel on his defense team on Monday.

What we expect in today’s proceedings: Trump will be accompanied throughout the day by the Secret Service. His arrest will be processed in the district attorney’s office, where he will be fingerprinted. It’s still unclear if a mugshot will be taken, sources told CNN, as there are concerns that it could leak out.

Trump will be taken through back hallways and elevators to the courthouse, which is in the same building as the district attorney’s office. He will walk through a public hallway to the courtroom where he will be arraigned.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed reporting to this post.

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump said he expects Trump to speak to the cameras in the hallway outside of the Manhattan courtroom before and after his Tuesday arraignment. 

Chris Kise, one of Trump’s lawyers, said he met with Trump last night at Trump Tower. 

“The president is resilient, upbeat, and is as determined as ever to fight off drivers of injustice,” Kise said. 

This morning lawyers with the district attorney’s office and Trump’s team are ironing out details of a protective order to cover the documents that will be turned over in the case. 

Kise said that Todd Blanche “is a great addition” to the legal team. There are questions as to whether Joe Tacopina, another attorney, is being replaced on the team. 

Kise said Tacopina will have his hands full defending Trump at the battery and defamation trial brought by former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll that starts later this month. 

“Joe’s a great lawyer. He’s got to focus on a trial starting in two weeks,” Kise said.

While there is currently a draft of the speech former President Donald Trump will deliver at Mar-a-Lago tonight, advisers do not expect it to be finalized until after his arraignment this afternoon, a source familiar said.

Advisers are continuing to tweak the remarks, and Trump is currently expected to review and revise the speech on his flight back to Florida this evening.

Former President Donald Trump, who spent last night at Trump Tower in New York City ahead of his arraignment today, is eager to speak publicly about his indictment, according to multiple people familiar with his thinking. 

Though he is not scheduled to speak until he arrives at Mar-a-Lago tonight, Trump has weighed saying something while still in Manhattan. He had initially considered doing so outside the courthouse but decided against that because of security considerations.

It remains unclear if he will talk while in New York, and advisers have urged him to hold off until he has the command of his own ballroom tonight, where hundreds of his supporters, surrogates and friends are expected to gather.

Advisers have warned Trump that any unplanned remarks put him at high risk of hurting his case. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech is expected to have legal eyes on it before he delivers it tonight. 

But Trump is itching to make his case publicly as he continues to lash out at the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. 

Donald Trump’s arraignment today in Manhattan will likely be “a typical processing, which doesn’t take long, 20-30 minutes,” his attorney Joe Tacopina told ABC’s Good Morning America, adding that the former president will be “processed the way anyone else would.”

Discussions between the Trump legal team and prosecutors have been “about certain procedural things, but nothing substantially about the indictment,” Tacopina said. 

“I don’t think this case is going to see a jury. I think it’s going to go away on papers,” he added.

In terms of other limitations placed on Trump, Tacopina said: “There’s no indication that there’ll be a gag order. It can’t happen in this case.”

An ex-president who’s always on the attack will no longer be the sole orchestrator of his fate.

When Donald Trump officially becomes a criminal defendant on Tuesday, he’ll be subject to a legal system he can’t control.

Trump has long conjured political storms, alternative realities, legal imbroglios and media spectacles to blur the truth or discredit institutions that have constrained his rule-busting behavior. He’ll lose that ability when he steps before the court at his arraignment in a case related to a hush money payment to an adult film actress.

And there are increasing signs that this new reality – which will come with hefty financial commitments in legal fees and locks on Trump’s calendar – could be multiplied at a time when he’s already facing the intense demands of another White House bid.

That’s because the ex-president – the first to face criminal charges – also appears to face serious problems in a potentially more perilous case involving his alleged mishandling of secret documents being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith. Charges look like an increasing possibility as the Justice Department secures evidence about Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

Smith’s prosecutors have secured daily notes, texts, emails and photographs and are focused on cataloguing how Trump handled classified records around Mar-a-Lago and those who may have witnessed the former president with them, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez reported Monday. The new details coincide with signs the Justice Department is taking steps consistent with the end of an investigation.

Trump’s former lawyer, Ty Cobb, told CNN that the developments represent a serious turn in the case for the ex-president. “We’ve known the investigatory steps were under way, we just haven’t known alleged results until today,” Cobb said. “I think these are highly consequential.”

The documents case may not be the end of it. Smith is also investigating Trump’s conduct in the run-up to the US Capitol insurrection. Then there’s also a possible prosecution in Georgia led by a district attorney probing the ex-president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election result in the swing state.

Trump denies any wrongdoing in all of these investigations. He has described his behavior in Georgia as “perfect.” And he has lambasted the sealed indictment in New York, where he faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud, as an example of politicized justice.

But at a grave moment for the country, given that an ex-president and current presidential candidate is about to appear in court, there’s also growing sense of inexorably building pressure on Trump that will compromise his capacity to evade accountability.

Keep reading here.

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed reporting to this post.