Miami officials assured the public that they have extensive plans to handle potentially massive crowds descending on the federal courthouse on Tuesday when former President Donald Trump is arraigned on federal criminal charges.
“We’re bringing in enough resources to handle a crowd anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000,” Police Chief Manny Morales said. “We are ready,” Morales said. “There’s no reason to fear.”
Residents and commuters who work in downtown Miami should be prepared for possible street closures — especially if the crowd size swells. Morales and Mayor Francis Suarez declined to reveal many specifics about what they’re planning.
“We encourage people to be peaceful in their demonstrating how they feel, and we’re going to have the adequate forces necessary to ensure that,” Suarez said at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Trump and people supporting him — including Republican political leaders from Broward and Palm Beach counties — have urged people to descend on Miami to express objections to federal indictment charging Trump with 37 felony counts, 31 relating to the willful retention of national defense information. Other charges include conspiracy to commit obstruction and false statements.
“I believe it will be a peaceful event. I don’t think this will be a January 6th. I’ve had people say ‘What can I do?’ and my answer is ‘peacefully say you don’t support what the Department of Justice is doing,’” said Tom Powers, chairman of the Broward Republican Party. “People are frustrated and upset, and my big thing is there’s nothing wrong with being frustrated and upset, but act like adults and act accordingly. We’re not above the law.”
Over the weekend, Powers emailed the Republican Party’s list telling them when they could show up to support Trump on Monday at his golf club in Doral and Tuesday at the Federal Courthouse in Miami. So did Larry Snowden, president of the Palm Beach County-based Club 47, a large, pro-Trump organization.
Among those already in the area: Trump. He arrived at Miami International Airport about 3 p.m. Monday aboard his red, white and blue Boeing 757, emblazoned with his name in gold. Television helicopter video showed him getting into a black SUV before he was driven to the Trump National Doral golf resort, where he was expected to spend the night.
He describes his Mar-a-Lago resort and club in Palm Beach — where the indictment alleges Trump intentionally retained hundreds of classified documents that he took with him from the White House — as his home. He doesn’t typically spend the hot summer season there, staying instead at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. After the court proceedings Tuesday, he’s planning to return to Bedminster for an evening speech and fundraiser.
The former president has encouraged supporters to join a planned protest at the Miami courthouse Tuesday, where he will face the charges and surrender to authorities.
“We need strength in our country now,” Trump said Sunday, speaking to longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone, of Fort Lauderdale, in an interview on WABC Radio. “And they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully. They have to go out.”
“Look, our country has to protest. We have plenty to protest. We’ve lost everything,” Trump added.
Miami officials said they’re ready for whatever happens.
“We have been planning and preparing to ensure that the city of Miami is safe and secure,” Morales said.
“Make no mistake about it, we’re taking this event extremely serious. We know that there is a potential of things taking a turn for the worse, but that’s not the Miami way,” Morales said.
Asked specifically about metal barriers to secure the area around the federal courthouse, Morales said, “We’re not ready to discuss that at this time.”
Morales said the police are aware of many posts online calling for people to head to Miami. But as of Monday, he said, there were not specific, credible threats. “There has been a lot of posts. None that I’m aware (of) that can cause any concern of any type of credibility,” he said.
And, he said, as of Monday afternoon there weren’t plans to separate pro- and anti-Trump protesters.
The configuration and logistics of the area “make that a little bit difficult,” Morales said, adding that police would act “based on the crowd size” and if necessary “make sure that they’re separated.”
Morales said the city is working with other law enforcement agencies, including county police and federal law enforcement, and decision-makers from all agencies would be working under a unified command, and be physically together at a police command center.
The objective of the city’s preparations, Suarez said, is to “make sure that everyone has a right to peacefully express themselves and exercise their constitutional rights, and obviously do it in a peaceful manner.” He added that people have a constitutional “right to express themselves, but we also believe in law and order.”
Suarez cited the way Miami responded to the 2020 protests against police violence against minorities, which didn’t result in the kinds of clashes seen in some other U.S. cities.
“We were a model for how to deal with those protests in the country,” Suarez said. Miami “has dealt with many, many kinds of protests that are very, very large, will have the right action plan of the right resources in place in the right place to make sure that there are no incidents.”
“We handled it very well. We did things not to create unnecessary confrontations,” he said.
Even if there is no violence, the large number of people means residents and commuters “should expect the possibility of some disruption,” adding that “we are prepared for a variety of different size crowds and obviously crowd size is dependent on a variety of issues including, but not limited to, the weather.”
Jeh Johnson, who was secretary of homeland security under former President Barack Obama, said on CNN that “here hasn’t been a whole lot of time to prepare for this. The indictment just came down late last week. Normally in a situation like this, law enforcement wants a lot of time to provide adequate security.”
Johnson said some statements from Trump supporters in recent days are concerning. “Some of the rhetoric we’ve heard over the last couple days has been over the top dangerously irresponsible as some of these extremists in public life seek to outdo each other. That kind of rhetoric makes unacceptable behavior acceptable and frankly violence inevitable,” Johnson said on CNN.
Suarez may enter the contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but he declined to address questions about whether what’s unfolding with Trump could help him or whether he’d pardon Trump if he becomes president and Trump is convicted. “I’m not here to talk about politics. I’m here in my role as the mayor of the city of Miami projecting confidence to our residents, and to the residents of the country that we’re going to be ready.”
Like Powers, Larry Snowden, president of the Palm Beach County-based Club 47, said he sent an email to his group’s list of the weekend letting them know when and where to show support for Trump. He said he’s not an organizer for protests on Tuesday.
Club 47 gets its name from members’ support for Trump winning in 2024 and becoming the 47th president. It used to be Club 45 because Trump was the 45th president.
“I’m encouraging people to go to show support for President Trump and have a peaceful presentation of signs and flags. We obviously don’t condone anything that in any way is not peaceful,” Snowden said. “We certainly don’t need something like happened on January 6th.”
Snowden said he isn’t worried about violence. “I don’t think it’s a concern unless infiltrators mix themselves into the group” to try to make Trump supporters look bad.
Powers said urging people to make their feelings about the indictment known isn’t an endorsement of Trump; he said he’s not taking sides as a party leader.
Snowden is a strong Trump supporter, and decried the indictment. “Without a doubt I feel that it’s a scam,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is President Trump’s not going to go away. He will not stop. He will not quit. And his people are just more and more energized as a result of this effort.”
Mindy Koch, chair of the Palm Beach Democratic Party, said in a statement Monday that the case demands “impartial justice.”
“We have federal records laws in place to protect the nation’s security. That means that high-ranking government officials must turn over classified documents when they complete their public service,” Koch said. The result of former President Trump’s alleged actions is that U.S. citizens now have to worry that our national security is compromised.”
This report was supplemented with information from The Associated Press.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com, on Twitter @browardpolitics and on Post.news/@browardpolitics.