Donald J. Trump prepared Friday to turn himself in to Manhattan prosecutors next week as the New York police step up their measures to deal with protests and partisan responses from Democrats and Republicans at a tumultuous time for a deeply polarized nation.
A day after a grand jury indicted Trump and made him the first former president to face criminal charges, metal barricades were erected around the Center Street criminal courthouse in Lower Manhattan.
Trump is expected to enter that dimly lit building under Secret Service protection to answer the charges before a state judge on Tuesday.
Dozens of reporters and cameramen have been camping across the street since Friday, while 20 court officials have been standing at the courthouse entrances, monitoring activity on the street.
Trump intends to travel to New York on Monday and will stay that night at Trump Tower, according to people familiar with his preparations.
He has no plans to hold a news conference or address the public while in New York, those people said.
On Friday, Trump remained mostly quiet at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, where he spent the day talking on the phone with aides.
One of his lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said in a television interview that he will not settle and is prepared to go to trial, a typically defiant stance that is likely to win the sympathy of his supporters, who view the process as a political vendetta from the Democrats.
On Friday afternoon, Trump lashed out at The Social Truth, the social media platform he founded, writing in all capital letters that the Democrats “were impeaching a totally innocent man in an act of election obstruction and interference, while our country was He’s going to hell.”
The former president is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on charges related to paying a porn star to silence her after they had an extramarital affair.
The former president has denied the affair, and has been indicted on more than two dozen counts in a sealed indictment, though the exact charges remain unknown.
