Miami mayor says city braced for protests ahead of Trump court appearance amid far-right threats

Despite the spectre of violence looming over Tuesday’s planned arraignment of former president Donald Trump, City of Miami officials claim that they will have everything under control on Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference at Miami police headquarter, Mayor Francis Suarez said the city is enacting plans to “make sure that everyone has a right to peacefully express themselves and exercise their constitutional rights” in “an obviously peaceful manner”.

“In our city, we obviously believe in the Constitution, and believe that people should have the right to express themselves. But we also believe in law and order. And we know that and we hope that tomorrow will be peaceful.

“We encourage people to be peaceful in demonstrating how they feel. And we’re going to have the adequate forces necessary to ensure that,” he said.

Mr Suarez, who is rumoured to be planning to enter the 2024 Republican presidential primary himself, declined to criticise the ex-president’s rhetoric and said he has not spoken to Mr Trump to ask him to retract his calls for protest, despite the former president’s history of inciting violence.

“I have not spoken to him. I don’t have his phone number,” he said.

Mr Suarez appeared to compare the events January 6 and the potential violence that could ensue on Tuesday to the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020.

He said city and state law enforcement officials handled those protests without incident, and called the response to those events “a model for how to deal with those protests in the country”.

“We did things not to create unnecessary confrontations. We gave people a space to express themselves without unnecessarily creating confrontations. In that moment, in that particular case, we had a curfew that we implemented. We had a variety of different resources that we used, that I thought were different than other cities in America, and they allowed us to deescalate without creating incidents,” he said.

“I have full faith and confidence that our department … will have the right action plan and will have the right resources in place. In the right place to make sure that there are no incidents,” he said.

But Mr Suarez repeatedly declined to address concerns about the possibility that the same violent extremist groups that responded to Mr Trump’s call for protests in 2021 would again come to support him on Tuesday.

He also told reporters there would be no effort to separate protesters and counterprotesters and said law enforcement would not be erecting any hardened barrier around the courthouse because “that’s what freedom of speech is”.

Because the courthouse is a federal facility, Department of Homeland Security personnel there began to take some precautions for potential protests on Monday.

Outside the building where Mr Trump will be arraigned, marked police vehicles belonging to the Federal Protective could be seen parked strategically in areas not already rendered inaccessible to cars with concrete bollards and other preexisting vehicle barriers, blocking a path from the street onto courthouse property.

Groups of FPS officers, some leading explosive detection dogs, could be seen congregating in areas where shade from trees could shield them from the hot Florida sun.

Around 10.30am, other officers began positioning moveable barriers and stretching police tape to cordon off a wide swath of the courthouse lawn from public access in preparation for possible demonstrations by Mr Trump’s supporters, should any heed the twice-impeached, twice-indicted ex-president’s call for protests on the day of his arraignment.

One FPS officer who asked not to be identified told The Independent that he and his colleagues were hopeful that the crowd would remain peaceful, but said they were aware that things could go south quickly.“We’re prepared for anything but we’re hoping there won’t be any trouble,” he said.

Despite the officer’s hopes of a quiet day on Tuesday, Mr Trump’s history suggests the day might have another outcome.

The last time the twice-impeached, now twice-indicted ex-president urged his supporters to protest at a set date, time and location, it was more than two years ago, on the day Congress was set to certify his 2020 election loss to now-President Joe Biden.

That day, a riotous pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and interrupted the proceedings for hours while causing millions of dollars in damage to that historic building and leaving hundreds of police officers with grievous injuries.

Like he did when it became clear he had lost the election in late 2020, Mr Trump has again called for his followers to come to his aid by massing at the Wilkie D Ferguson Jr courthouse in downtown Miami to show their support and voice their displeasure at the Justice Department’s decision to indict him on 37 separate charges stemming from his alleged unlawful retention of national defence information and obstruction of justice.

Writing on his Truth Social platform on 9 June, Mr Trump said: “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!”

In the days since, both he and many of his highest-profile supporters have kept up a steady string of social media denunciations of the charges against him, which were voted out by a Florida grand jury last Thursday.

On pro-Trump message board Patriots.win, formerly The Donald, a site that was central to organising riots on January 6, supporters have declared “war”, said protests could make “Waco look like a tea party,” and said that “this is what the Second Amendment was made for.”

One of Mr Trump’s highest-profile boosters, failed Republican candidate for Arizona governor Kari Lake, suggested during a Friday appearance in Georgia that armed Americans would stop Mr Trump’s prosecution.

“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me,” she said. “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA … That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”

Another prominent Arizona Republican US Rep Andy Biggs of Arizona, said on his congressional Twitter account that “we have now reached a war phase.”

“Eye for an eye,” he wrote, though his office later claimed that his comment was a call for congressional Republicans to use their “procedural tools” to counter “the Left’s weaponization of our federal law enforcement apparatus,” rather than an exhortation for violence.

Although Mr Trump’s last criminal arraignment in New York resulted in very few protests, some of Mr Trump’s most prominent supporters say they plan to come out in force on Tuesday.

Tim Gionet, the white nationalist livestreamer known as Baked Alaska and a convicted Capitol rioter, suggested on a recent stream that he plans to join protests in Miami.

Another prominent pro-Trump activist, Laura Loomer, also announced plans on social media for a “peaceful rally” at the federal courthouse on Tuesday and asked demonstrators to bring pro-Trump apparel, bullhorns and “love” for the former president.

She also shared an image of Mr Trump’s “SEE YOU IN MIAMI” post and added an image of the court, the court’s address and the caption “ALL HANDS ON DECK” and “Trump Document Hoax Rally.”