Despite its long history of high-profile legal cases, Miami is bracing for arguably the biggest one the South Florida city has ever seen, The Miami Herald reports.
Donald Trump’s first court appearance is scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday in a federal case against the former president that alleges he mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
And according to the report, “the buildup to an event of historical import with no obvious parallel anywhere” is apparent in the area surrounding the courthouse, according to the report, which notes that a plaza on the courthouse building’s eastern flank on North Miami Avenue was filled with folding canopies set up by local, national and international media outlets, along with visibly heightened security amid threats of potential disruption.
Miami police Chief Manny Morales said officials expect between 5,000 and 50,000 people to be near the courthouse on Tuesday.
Miami has a history of hosting high-profile trials since the U.S. court first started adjudicating cases in 1911, including the trials of former Panamanian strong man Manuel Noriega.
The Herald reports that “the city has hosted a cornucopia of federal cases against peddlers of swampland, Prohibition bootleggers, smugglers of weapons and immigrants, drug lords, dirty judges and politicians, famous mobsters and fraudsters of all stripes. They included the notorious federal criminal trial and conviction in 1992, on drug trafficking and money-laundering charges, of one foreign leader, Manuel Noriega of Panama, noted Paul George, resident historian at the HistoryMiami museum.”
The report notes that George wrote in 2021 article that senior U.S. District Court Judge Federico Moreno alone presided over cases “dealing with arms merchants, drug dealers, including Miami’s homegrown drug lords, Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta, racial discriminators, firefighting hazing in the City of Miami, Ponzi schemes, ecstasy peddlers, carjacking, anti-pornography ordinances, embezzlement of postal funds, Grand Jury obstruction, airplane hijackers, and the largest civil racketeering judgment in the United States.”
Trump’s case landing in South Florida is not surprising, George told The Herald.
“We’ve had some sensational cases,” George told the outlet. “The federal court here has handled some really charged cases in the past, but the reality is Miami now is more in the limelight than ever. We’re a city with a huge population, an international city full of immigrants, and all these things come before the courts here."
“It’s partly a function or our size, and the size of the federal court system here, and partly because everyone wants to be here.”
Novelist and historian Les Standiford, who authored “Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and the Rise of America’s Xanadu, told The Herald that the region has been a magnet for trouble.
“South Florida is where money goes to preen,” Standiford told the outlet. “And that’s what’s always brought trouble to South Florida. The same appeal that brings the money also brings dirty money. When researching the book, I became convinced that by dint of living in the middle of that unimaginable luxury at Mar-a-Lago, Trump fell in love with the place, the most opulent of mansions."
“There is something about living in a place like that makes you feel you’re invulnerable, that you can get away with anything. To live in Mar-a-Lago is to suggest you are a different class of human being. That’s the essential appeal of South Florida. It is a dreamland. It’s beautiful and it’s fantastic and a lot of people live good lives here. Then there are people who can’t stop until they take things to the very end.”
