Former President Donald Trump will surrender to law enforcement officials if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment he allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, according to Trump’s attorney.

The remarks from attorney Joseph Tacopina come in response to a report from NBC News that said federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were analyzing security assessments and making plans to prepare for the possibility that Trump will be indicted as early as next week.

Fox News reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office asked for a meeting with law enforcement officials to “discuss logistics for some time next week, which would mean that they are anticipating an indictment next week.”

Tacopina told the New York Daily News that if Trump is indicted, “there won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office.”

Tacopina later told CNBC that they “will follow normal procedures if it gets to that point.”

The New York Times reported earlier this week that it would be highly unlikely at this point for prosecutors to not seek an indictment given the amount of relevant witnesses questioned in front of the grand jury and the offer they made to Trump to come in and testify in front of the jury.

The case involves an alleged payment that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen admits he made to Daniels during the presidential race to keep quiet about an alleged 2006 tryst between Trump and Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty to related charges and served time in prison.

Although non-disclosure agreements are legal, the potential problem for Trump centers around how his company reimbursed Cohen. The payment was listed as a legal expense and the company cited a retainer agreement with Cohen. The retainer agreement did not exist and the reimbursement was not related to any legal services from Cohen, thus setting up a potential misdemeanor criminal charge of falsifying business records. The report said that Trump personally signed several of the checks to Cohen while he was serving as president.

Prosecutors can elevate the misdemeanor to a felony if they can prove that Trump’s “‘intent to defraud’ included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.”

Prosecutors argue that the second crime is that the $130,000 hush payment was an improper donation to the Trump campaign because the money was used to stop a story for the purpose of benefiting his presidential campaign.

Name one president that hasn't screwed around....

Many observers expect New York authorities to arrest former President Donald Trump this week. It's hard to imagine this being anything but a boon for Trump, who is running for president again.

Decisions about whether to bring criminal charges against a politician or authority figure certainly shouldn't hinge on whether it will help or hurt the person's political fortunes. But it's tough to see why Trump opponents would actually be cheering for this arrest.

As it stands, the Republican establishment and electorate both seem much more enamored with the thought of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as their party's future than with the continuance of a Trump-helmed GOP. But Trump's arrest could boost his claims of unfair persecution in a way that Trump supporters find sympathetic, compelling conservative officials to rally around him and delegitimizing future attempts to prosecute Trump for more serious offenses. And for what? The expected charges in this case—falsifying business records—will hardly lead to major punishment even if Trump is convicted.

And setting all politics aside, the charges are pretty weak.

The expected indictment stems from money that Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. The money was intended to keep her quiet about a past Daniels-Trump tryst.

In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to paying Daniels $130,000 at Trump's direction "for the principal purpose of influencing the election." This counted as an excessive contribution to the Trump presidential campaign. (Individual donors are permitted to give only relatively small amounts to a candidate each election cycle. There was a $2,700 limit in 2016, though its since been raised to $3,300.) Meanwhile, Trump admitted to reimbursing Cohen for this payment, using his own (not campaign) money. It was "a simple private transaction," said Trump, seeming to believe this made everything legal.

And indeed, experts have been divided over whether this payment counted as a criminal act, a campaign finance law violation, or nothing. As Reason's Jacob Sullum points out, "there is nothing inherently illegal about that payment." The theory underlying the case against Cohen was that he paid the money to influence the 2016 presidential election—but the money could just as well have been "to avoiding personal embarrassment for Trump or [to spare] Melania Trump's feelings."

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) investigated the matter as a possible violation of election law, but eventually decided not to pursue it.

Now, around seven years after Cohen paid Daniels, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is pursuing criminal charges against Trump. This time, the case rests on whether Trump falsified business records and with what intent.

In court, Cohen said that Trump's company had "falsely accounted" for the reimbursement payments he received, calling them legal expenses and citing a retainer agreement that didn't exist. Cohen has also claimed that Trump knew about this deception.

"In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor," notes The New York Times. "To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg's prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump's 'intent to defraud' included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime. In this case, that second crime could be a violation of New York State election law."

But proving that Trump intentionally violated campaign finance rules is hard, considering Trump's statements that he thought the personal payment was just a private transaction. The lack of evidence that Trump "knowingly and willingly" flouted election law seems to be why a federal case was never pursued. (It's also unclear how New York election law would cover a violation of federal limits on campaign contributions.)

"Even if Mr. Trump is indicted, convicting him or sending him to prison will be challenging," comments the Times. "For one thing, Mr. Trump's lawyers are sure to attack Mr. Cohen's credibility by citing his criminal record. The case against the former president also likely hinges on an untested and therefore risky legal theory involving a complex interplay of laws. Combining the falsifying business records charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president."

The idea that New York prosecutors will somehow succeed in showing what the FEC and other federal authorities couldn't is suspect. They're also running up against statute-of-limitations constraints. "In New York, misdemeanors have to be prosecuted within two years, and Class E felonies have to be prosecuted within five years," writes Sullum, who points out that the "legal expenses" payments to Cohen were made sometime in 2017. "Prosecutors would have to cite records that were falsified more recently, which maybe they can do, but to what end?"

Considering all of this, prosecuting Trump now would basically be an exercise in chest-thumping to score some political points, not a pure effort to see that justice is served. Which means that Trump's claims of a politics-based persecution could, in this instance, be right.

The left was practically salivating at the thought of Trump getting indicted and arrested, but just as quickly as the hype started, it seems to be fizzling out. It looks like their dreams of seeing him in handcuffs are slipping away faster than a greased pig at a rodeo. At this point, I dare say that it looks like it won’t happen at all.

That’s right. No indictment. No handcuffs. No perp walk. The radical left has been yearning for this moment for years. And for a few days, it seemed like that wish might finally come true. However, it now appears to be just another chapter in a never-ending fantasy that always falls short of becoming a reality.

The first hint that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump was going sour was when former Michael Cohen legal advisor Robert Costello appeared as a surprise witness on Monday. Trump touted Costello’s testimony as conclusive and irrefutable evidence of his innocence. And he may not have been exaggerating.

It sure does look like Costello’s testimony, along with the evidence he presented — a five-year-old letter from Michael Cohen’s attorney affirming that Cohen made the payment to Stormy Daniels alone and that Trump had no role in reimbursing him — had a significant impact on Bragg’s case against Trump. This impact was so substantial that the Manhattan grand jury did not assemble on Wednesday, and while they did meet on Thursday, they did not hear the case involving Trump, postponing the alleged indictment to at least next week.

However, it remains doubtful that the indictment will occur at all. In fact, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday that there is speculation that the prosecutors have been unsuccessful in persuading the jury to accept that Trump is guilty of a crime.

“They are having trouble convincing the jury to swallow the case. It’s a weak case and has caused divisions in the DA’s office,” a source allegedly told the outlet. “Other reports suggested the DA’s office could be contemplating a change of strategy. The grand jury meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, but postponements are not unusual and jurors are warned to expect last-minute changes. Either way, it leaves the nation with a cliffhanger.”

Legal experts from both sides of the political aisle have highlighted the frailty of Bragg’s case. Bragg was most certainly aware of this fact, too. Perhaps he didn’t care because he was too eager to become a hero to the radical left and advance his career. Or maybe his Trump Derangement Syndrome blinded him to the fact that he had a weak case. Ironically, the only person who stands to benefit from this situation is Trump.

The anticipation of an imminent indictment in New York has led to a surge in donations for Trump. According to reports, his campaign raked in $1.5 million in the three days after Trump announced on Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.

Anything can happen, of course, but I’m confident that Bragg’s case blew up in his face and the case that the left thought would be Trump’s downfall only made him stronger.