The immediate past United States (US) president, Donald Trump was yesterday indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, New York, on criminal charges for his role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.
According to five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
In the coming days, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will likely ask Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment. The specific charges will be announced when he is arraigned.
Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the indictment now threatens to puncture.
His actions surrounding his 2020 electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.
But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
However, Trump has responded to the indictment, calling it a political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.
In a statement, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, and portrayed the case as the continuation of a politically motivated witch hunt against him.
“This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history,” Mr. Trump said in the statement, calling Mr. Bragg “a disgrace” and casting himself as “a completely innocent person.”
He added: “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats — the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country — have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.
“The Democrats have lied, cheated, and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.
“Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.
“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!
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Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and said he did not have an affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign.
Yesterday, the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the building where the grand jury was sitting in the minutes before the panel was scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. One of them carried a copy of the penal law — with Post-it notes visible — which was likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted. About three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the process of filing the indictment.
For weeks, the atmosphere outside of the district attorney’s office had resembled a circus. But the fervour had cooled in recent days, and the outskirts of the office were emptier yesterday than they have been in weeks.
However, some members of the congress who are Trump’s loyalists have rallied behind the ex-president, describing the indictment as hatred for Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz said in a tweet: “The Democrat Party’s hatred for Donald Trump knows no bounds. The ‘substance’ of this political persecution is utter garbage. This is completely unprecedented and is a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary chairman, and his counterpart Rep. Steve Scalise, who is the No. 2 House Republican called it “Outrageous.” Scalise said further: “The sham New York indictment of President Donald Trump is one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponising government to attack their political opponents.”
