A New York grand jury indicted Donald Trump on Thursday, March 30th, over alleged ‘hush money’ payments made to two women during his 2016 campaign, making him the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges. The 76-year-old Republican and frontrunner candidate in the 2024 presidential election has denied all wrongdoing.
The exact nature of the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is unclear because the indictment will remain under seal until the former president is arraigned next week.
AFP reports:
Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who has testified before the grand jury, told Congress in 2019 that he made the payment to [Stormy] Daniels on Trump’s behalf and was later reimbursed.
Prosecutors argued the checks were not properly registered, and the jury was asked to consider if there had been a cover-up, intended to benefit Trump’s campaign by burying the scandal.
According to the Associated Press,
In bringing the charges, Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is embracing an unusual case that was investigated by two previous sets of prosecutors, both of which declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking Trump’s indictment. The case may also turn in part on the testimony of a key witness, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges arising from the hush money payments, including making false statements.
In a statement, Trump blasted the indictment:
This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. 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.”
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.
Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles told AFP she expects he will be arraigned on Tuesday next week.
