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Manhattan’s DA wanted a Friday Trump arrest. Trump’s team said no.

Evan Vucci/AP Photo

The Manhattan district attorney’s office asked for Donald Trump to surrender on Friday following a grand jury’s vote to indict the former president.

But lawyers for Trump rebuffed the request saying that the Secret Service, which provides security detail for the former president, needed more time to prepare.

The exchange, which was relayed to POLITICO by a law-enforcement source and confirmed by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for the former president, underscores the extremely delicate, unprecedented nature of the indictment. Until Thursday, no ex-president in history had been criminally charged. And both the charges itself and the application of them have placed the country on uncharted legal and political terrain.