When former President Donald Trump appears in a New York courtroom Monday to face an unprecedented legal battle in his hush money case, law enforcement will deploy a sophisticated and multi-layered security plan greater than that of his previous high-profile cases in Manhattan, law enforcement officials told CNN.
Trump, who is supposed to be in court and does not have the option of skipping any of the estimated six-to-eight week trial, is now the presumptive Republican nominee set to rematch President Joe Biden in November – a key difference from his attendance during a civil fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James that inherently raises the stakes and will mean a more robust security package.
The hallmark of the strategy is a combination of extra staffing, strategically placed frozen zones, high-tech deployments and intelligence, which includes monitoring social media for anything ranging from lone wolf threats to major politically themed protests and disturbances, the officials said.
“Obviously, the threat picture is bigger,” said New York Police Department Assistant Chief John Hart, commanding officer of the NYPD’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, who added that they did a similar security ramp up around Trump when he became the GOP nominee in 2016.
“We had to set up a whole infrastructure around Trump Tower, which we will have to rebuild for this,” Hart said of the security posture around the former president. “We’re going to be looking at the threat picture on a constant basis. Social media scrubbing, just listening to people making calls or making threats online, all of those things.”
The NYPD will monitor security at the criminal court in lower Manhattan from two main locations: a mobile command center, which will be a short walk from 100 Centre St. where high-ranking NYPD officials will be stationed and manage deployments, and the Joint Operations Center, a massive intelligence hub where police can access over 50,000 cameras in the city. Hart called the hub the “nerve center of the city” and said they’ll be in communication with the mobile command center. Officers in both the command center and the Joint Operations Center will listen to radio channels tethered to Trump’s movements, follow cameras along his route and even zoom in on unruly crowds and troublesome incidents around Trump Tower and the courthouse.
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