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Donald Trump’s Indictment: What Next?

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NEW YORK (AP) — Every day, hundreds of people are taken into law enforcement custody in New York City. Former President Donald Trump will become one of them next week.

Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon after an investigation into payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. The indictment itself remains sealed for now in the first criminal case ever brought against a former U.S. president.

Trump — a Republican who assailed the case Thursday as a Democratic prosecutor’s “political persecution” of “a completely innocent person” — is expected to turn himself in to authorities next week, according to three people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly. The people said the details of a surrender are still being worked out.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said it had contacted Trump’s lawyer to coordinate his surrender and arraignment.

For any New York defendant, poor or powerful, answering criminal charges means being fingerprinted and photographed, fielding basic questions such as name and birthdate, and getting arraigned. All told, defendants are typically detained for at least several hours.

There can be differences in where the different steps happen, how long they take, whether handcuffs come out and other particulars. A lot depends on the severity of the case and whether defendants arrange to turn themselves in.

But there is no playbook for booking an ex-president with U.S. Secret Service protection. Agents are tasked with the protection of former presidents unless and until they say they don’t need it. Trump has kept his detail, so agents would need to be by his side at all times.

“This would be a unique outlier,” said Jeremy Saland, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor in Manhattan.

When Trump turns himself in, expect a carefully choreographed and relatively quick process and release without bail (as is common in New York) — and with a focus on security. A former president isn’t likely to be paraded in cuffs across a sidewalk or through a crowded courthouse hallway, Saland predicts.

“It’s a public forum, but safety is also paramount,” he notes.

If defendants are notified of an indictment or an impending arrest, they often arrange to turn themselves in. Doing so can smooth the process and strengthen arguments for bail by showing that they aren’t evading the case.

For example, when the former finance chief of Trump’s company, Allen Weisselberg, was indicted in Manhattan on tax fraud charges in 2021, he was able to turn himself in at a courthouse side door before normal workday hours.

The aim was “to reduce the likelihood that the surrender would become a media frenzy,” his lawyers wrote in a subsequent court filing.

Weisselberg arrived around 6:15 a.m. and was taken to what his attorneys described as a “holding room” for booking, an interview about potential release, and other procedures. To pass the time, he’d brought a book — “Chicken Soup for the Baseball Fan’s Soul” — and his lawyers supplied him with a snack, a face mask, breath mints and other items, according to the filing.

Weisselberg was arraigned and released about eight hours later, after being walked into a courtroom past a phalanx of news cameras in the hallway. (Weisselberg eventually pleaded guilty to dodging taxes on job perks including a free apartment and school tuition for his grandchildren.)

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, on the other hand, turned himself in at a Manhattan police station in 2018 to face rape and criminal sex act charges. He was briefly in a stationhouse cell, flipping through a biography of famed film director Elia Kazan, before being led out in handcuffs and taken to court under the gaze of journalists on the sidewalk — and other suspects in a courthouse booking area, where some hollered, “Yo, Harvey!”

Within about three hours after his surrender, Weinstein was arraigned and released on electronic monitoring and $1 million bail. (Weinstein was eventually convicted; his appeal is now before New York’s highest court. He’s also been convicted on similar charges in Los Angeles.)

But even a scheduled arrest is still an arrest. Defendants have to give up cellphones and some other personal items for safekeeping (and, in some cases, potential evidence), and lawyers generally aren’t allowed to accompany their clients through the process. Attorneys often advise traveling light and staying mum.

“Don’t make any statements. Because you think you’re helping your situation, but they can just use your statements against you — because you get caught up in the moment, you get nervous,” says Gianni Karmily, a defense lawyer who practices in New York City and on Long Island.

Many arrests in New York City aren’t preplanned. That can be a very different experience for defendants, even prominent ones.

When a hotel housekeeper accused then-International Monetary Fund chief and potential French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in 2011, he was pulled off a plane at Kennedy Airport.

Strauss-Kahn, who said his encounter with the woman was consensual, spent about 36 hours being questioned, arrested, undergoing various exams and waiting in such spots as a courthouse holding pen before being arraigned and jailed without bail. After several days at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail, Strauss-Kahn was allowed out on $1 million bail, under house arrest with armed guards.

Manhattan prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal case against Strauss-Kahn, who later settled a civil suit brought by his accuser.

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Photographer alleges he was forced to watch Megan Thee Stallion have sex and was unfairly fired

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.

In the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Emilio Garcia said that after a night out in 2022 in Ibiza, Spain, he was in an SUV with the hip-hop star when she began having sex with another woman right next to him. He was unable to get out of the moving car, and would have been in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country even if he was able. Garcia was “embarrassed, mortified and offended throughout the whole ordeal,” according to the lawsuit.

Alex Spiro, Megan’s lawyer, said she would fight the lawsuit in court.

“This is an employment claim for money — with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her,” Spiro said.

The next day Megan told Garcia never to discuss what he saw and berated and fat-shamed him, the lawsuit said. The complaint also said Garcia, who had already considered quitting because he was overworked and underpaid in a hostile work environment aggravated by Megan’s possessiveness and abusiveness, was misclassified as an independent contractor but treated as an exclusive employee.

Garcia raised those issues in the conversation with Megan, and was fired the following day after four years of working for her, the suit said. He has since filed a job discrimination complaint with the California Civil Rights Department.

The lawsuit, first reported by NBC News, names as defendants Megan, whose legal name is Megan Pete; her companies Megan Thee Stallion Entertainment and Hot Girl Touring; and her label, Roc Nation. A defense response has yet to be filed. There was no immediate response to an email seeking comment from a representative of Roc Nation.

Garcia is seeking financial damages to be determined at trial, alleging he has suffered severely both emotionally and physically because of his treatment on the job, the firing and having to witness the scene in the SUV.

Megan, 29, was previously involved in major legal drama — and underwent a torrent of online abuse — as the victim of a shooting by rapper Tory Lanez, who a jury found fired at her feet on a street in the Hollywood Hills in 2020. She testified at the trial where jurors convicted Lanez of three felonies and a judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Already a major rising artist at the time of the shooting, Megan has since become one of hip-hop’s biggest stars. She won a Grammy for best new artist in 2021, and she had No. 1 singles with “Savage,” featuring Beyoncé, and as a guest on Cardi B’s “WAP.”

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Body of O.J. Simpson to be cremated this week; brain will not be studied for CTE

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April 15 (UPI) — The body of O.J. Simpson, who died last week at the age of 76, is to be cremated, a lawyer representing the ex-football superstar’s estate said, adding his brain will not be donated for research.

Malcolm LaVergne, Simpson’s longtime attorney and executor, told the New York Post that his client’s body is to be cremated Tuesday in Las Vegas.

He said Simpson’s family also gave a “hard no” to scientists seeking to examine the former running back’s brain for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is better known as CTE.

CTE is a rare and little understood brain disorder that is likely caused by repeated blows to the head. According to the Mayo Clinic, CTE results in the death of nerve cells in the brain and the only way to definitively diagnose it is with an autopsy of the organ after death.

Memory and thinking problems, confusion, personality changes and erratic behavior, including aggression, depression and suicidal ideation, are among CTE’s symptoms, the Alzheimer’s Association said.

The disease has been found in those who play contact sports, including football and hockey.

LaVergne confirmed to NBC News on Sunday that at least one person has called seeking Simpson’s brain.

“His entire body, including his brain, will be cremated,” he said.

Simpson died Wednesday following a battle with cancer.

Known by the nickname “The Juice,” Simpson was a NFL superstar during the 1970s, which made him a household name that propelled him into film and television during the next decade.

But his stardom would come crashing down in the mid-1990s when he was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

His high-profile trial lasted months, but ended with his acquittal.

In 2008, he was found guilty on a dozen charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery, and was paroled in 2017 after serving nine years of his 33-year sentence.

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Africa

Donors raise more than 2 billion euros for Sudan aid a year into war

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PARIS/CAIRO, April 15 (Reuters) – Donors pledged more than 2 billion euros ($2.13 billion) for war-torn Sudan at a conference in Paris on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said, on the first anniversary of what aid workers describe as a neglected but devastating conflict.
Efforts to help millions of people driven to the verge of famine by the war have been held up by continued fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), restrictions imposed by the warring sides, and demands on donors from other global crises including in Gaza and Ukraine.
Conflict in Sudan is threatening to expand, with fighting heating up in and around al-Fashir, a besieged aid hub and the last city in the western Darfur region not taken over by the RSF. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge in the area.
“The world is busy with other countries,” Bashir Awad, a resident of Omdurman, part of the wider capital and a key battleground, told Reuters last week. “We had to help ourselves, share food with each other, and depend on God.”
In Paris, the EU pledged 350 million euros, while France and Germany, the co-sponsors, committed 110 million euros and 244 million euros respectively. The United States pledged $147 million and Britain $110 million.
Speaking at the end of the conference, which included Sudanese civilian actors, Macron emphasized the need to coordinate overlapping and so far unsuccessful international efforts to resolve the conflict and to stop foreign support for the warring parties.
“Unfortunately the amount that we mobilised today is still probably less than was mobilised by several powers since the start of the war to help one or the other side kill each other,” he said.
As regional powers compete for influence in Sudan, U.N. experts say allegations that the United Arab Emirates helped arm the RSF are credible, while sources say the army has received weapons from Iran. Both sides have rejected the reports.
The war, which broke out between the Sudanese army and the RSF as they vied for power ahead of a planned transition, has crippled infrastructure, displaced more than 8.5 million people, and cut many off from food supplies and basic services.
“We can manage together to avoid a terrible famine catastrophe, but only if we get active together now,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, adding that, in the worst-case scenario, 1 million people could die of hunger this year.
The United Nations is seeking $2.7 billion this year for aid inside Sudan, where 25 million people need assistance, an appeal that was just 6% funded before the Paris meeting. It is seeking another $1.4 billion for assistance in neighbouring countries that have housed hundreds of thousands of refugees.
The international aid effort faces obstacles to gaining access on the ground.
The army has said it would not allow aid into the wide swathes of the country controlled by its foes from the RSF. Aid agencies have accused the RSF of looting aid. Both sides have denied holding up relief.
“I hope the money raised today is translated into aid that reaches people in need,” said Abdullah Al Rabeeah, head of Saudi Arabia’s KSRelief.
On Friday, Sudan’s army-aligned foreign ministry protested that it had not been invited to the conference. “We must remind the organisers that the international guardianship system has been abolished for decades,” it said in a statement.

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