Everything that happens to Donald Trump from now on is going to follow a script that mirrors the experience of ordinary criminals who are indicted and arraigned every day in Manhattan. Next Tuesday, sometime after 2:30 according to reports, he will be escorted into the Criminal Courts Building in lower Manhattan by his lawyers and a member of his Secret Service detail. He will be arrested. He will be booked. He will be fingerprinted. He will have his mugshot taken: front, left and right profiles. He will be taken into the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan, the same judge who oversaw the Trump Organization tax fraud trial. He will be arraigned. The charges against him will be read. He will be asked, "what is your plea?" He will plead not guilty. Bail will be set, along with whatever restrictions the judge deems necessary to ensure his appearance at his trial sometime in the future. He will be released.
The only extraordinary thing about the entire matter will be the presence of at least one Secret Service agent, to which Trump is entitled as a former president. Everything else that will happen to Donald Trump next Tuesday will be pretty much the same thing that happens to any other defendant in New York City charged with a felony. Trump, accustomed to the gilded splendor of Mar-a-Lago and the wide, green fairways of his many golf courses, will walk through the plain-painted, linoleum-floored corridors of the Criminal Courts Building into an ordinary New York courtroom to be arraigned as an ordinary alleged criminal.
