At Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Camp Is Caught Off Guard

 

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Camp Is Caught Off Guard

 

The former president’s aides had believed that any action by the grand jury was still weeks away.

 

Maggie Haberman

By Maggie Haberman

March 30, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/nyregion/trump-mar-a-lago.html

 

At Mar-a-Lago on Thursday evening, former President Donald J. Trump was still absorbing the news of his indictment, according to several people close to him. Mr. Trump and his aides were caught off guard by the timing, believing that any action by the grand jury was still weeks away and might not occur at all.

 

Some advisers had become confident that there would be no movement until the end of April at the earliest and were looking at the political implications for Mr. Trump’s closest potential rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

 

The specifics of the Manhattan indictment are not yet known, but the charges are expected to center on Mr. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

 

At Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach estate, Mr. Trump’s mood has ranged in recent weeks from optimism and bravado to anxiety about his future.

 

On Thursday evening, after the grand jury indicted him, Mr. Trump was angry but mainly focused on the political implications of the charges, not the legal consequences, according to people familiar with his thinking.

 

He seemed eager to project confidence and calm and was seen having a very public dinner with his wife, Melania, and her parents at the club at Mar-a-Lago.

 

He has been keeping a relatively normal schedule at Mar-a-Lago, which he calls “my beautiful home” — dining with guests, playing golf and telling nearly anyone that he was in a good mood and that he believed the case against him by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, had fallen apart.

 

At times Mr. Trump has appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes, according to people who have spent time with him in recent days.

 

He was also trying to tamp down his own behavior, after he posted to his social media site a news article with an image of Mr. Bragg on one side and Mr. Trump holding a baseball bat on the other. Mr. Trump’s lawyers were alarmed that he was doing himself damage. He did not repeat the act.

 

For all of Mr. Trump’s outward confidence, the reality is that he has feared and avoided an indictment for more than four decades, after first being criminally investigated in the 1970s. He watched in horror as his former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, surrendered to authorities, which was shown on television in 2021. Mr. Weisselberg is only slightly younger than Mr. Trump, who told aides he couldn’t believe “what they’re doing to that old man.”

 

On Thursday, the former president responded to news of the indictment with an aggressive statement, calling the grand jury vote “political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

 

He framed the investigation that resulted in the indictment as the latest in the long line of criminal inquiries he has faced, none of which have resulted in charges.

 

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable,” he wrote. “Indicting a completely innocent person.”

 

At the same time, a large group of former Trump Organization employees was quietly cheering the latest developments via text messages, a reminder of how many people have felt burned in various ways by Mr. Trump over the years.

 

On Thursday night, local police were stationed outside the front gate to Mar-a-Lago. The 100-year-old mansion that serves as the former president’s lavish residence and private club has long been a respite for Mr. Trump. But that is no longer the case. Last summer, federal investigators searched the estate. And on Thursday it was the site where he learned he would become the first former president to face criminal charges.

 

Nicole Danna contributed reporting.

 

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT