Former United States President, Donald Trump, was last night indicted in Manhattan on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star.
According to at least five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development will shake up the 2024 US presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.
Trump will be the first former US President to face criminal charges. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case is focused on a hush-money payment to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.
The unprecedented case against Trump will have broad ramifications, according to The New York Times.
Prosecutors for District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg will probably ask Mr. Trump to appear in court soon to be charged. When he is arraigned, the particular charges will be revealed.
Trump has evaded criminal prosecution for years despite intense scrutiny and several probes, cultivating a legal air of invincibility that the indictment now threatens to pierce.
A separate federal inquiry into Trump’s conduct following his loss in the 2020 election is also under way, and a Georgia prosecutor is nearing completion of an enquiry into his efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.
But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case was built around a tawdry episode that predates 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.
Read Also: Insurrection Probe: Pence Ordered To Testify Against
On Thursday, 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 2pm. 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 fervor had cooled in recent days, and the outskirts of the office were emptier on Thursday than they have been in weeks.
Former President Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign.