Donald Trump’s lawyer has said the ex-president’s legal team has not seen the indictment against him and has only media reports to go on.
Joe Tacopina was speaking after a grand jury voted to indict Mr Trump in connection with a $130,000 pay-out to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Mr Trump’s legal team did not know about the indictment until Thursday evening, Mr Tacopina told CBS.
He blamed “political persecution” for the grand jury’s decision.
Mr Trump is expected to appear in court to face the charges and enter a plea in New York, reportedly next Tuesday.
He will not be put in handcuffs when he does, Mr Tacopina told ABC News.
He added: “I understand they’re going to be closing off blocks around the courthouse, shutting down the courthouse.”
On Friday morning, the streets around the courthouse were calm but the barricades were going up in anticipation of what may come next week.
The police were on patrol and security plans being put into place. Many expect the area to go into lockdown when the former president attends court.
Mr Trump, 76, denies wrongdoing. He is the first serving or former US president to face a criminal charge.
In 2016, adult film star Stormy Daniels contacted media outlets offering to sell her account of what she said was an adulterous affair she had with Mr Trump in 2006 – the year after he married his current wife, Melania.
Mr Trump’s team got wind of this and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid $130,000 to Ms Daniels to keep quiet. This is not illegal.
However, when Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen, the record for the payment says it was for legal fees. Prosecutors say this amounts to Mr Trump falsifying business records, which is a misdemeanour – a criminal offence – in New York.
President Joe Biden declined to comment on the indictment, despite being pressed on the issue by journalists as he left the White House on a trip to Mississippi.
Mr Tacopina said Mr Trump was being “pursued by a prosecutor who has obviously very diverse political views from the president. So it’s a very troubling case.”
He said the former president was “not worried at all” about the charges.
“He’s upset, angry. He’s being persecuted politically. That is clear to many people, not only on the Right but on the Left.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence calls Trump’s indictment “an outrage” and suggests that the Manhattan district attorney who is leading the case, Alvin Bragg, is politically motivated.
“This will only further serve to divide our country,” Pence says.
Pence also says the case would “offend” the notion of the overwhelming majority of the American people “who believe in fairness, who believe in equal treatment before the law”.
Meanwhile, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis – widely seen as Trump’s main potential opponent for the Republican presidential candidate nomination – criticised the indictment on Twitter, saying it was “un-American”.
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” he said.
DeSantis also alleged that the Manhattan district attorney was “Soros-backed” – a reference to George Soros, the philanthropist that some on the right have claimed is at the heart of a global conspiracy.
Barry Moore, a Republican Congressman representing Alabama, says Donald Trump’s indictment would make Americans “question the fairness of the justice system”.
He said the US Department of Justice was being “weaponised” and described the prosecution in the case as flawed and troubling.
Moore, who has endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign, told the BBC the development would help the former president in the Republican primaries and a possible run for the White House.
He said he expected “a red wave and support for this man unlike we’ve seen … in the history of an election”.