NEW YORK, 31 Mar: Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, a historic reckoning after years of investigations into his personal, political and business dealings and an abrupt jolt to his bid to retake the White House.
\nThe exact nature of the charges was unclear Friday because the indictment remained under seal, but they stem from payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. Prosecutors said they were working to coordinate Trump\u2019s surrender, which could happen early next week. They did not say whether they intended to seek prison time in the event of a conviction, a development that wouldn\u2019t prevent Trump from seeking and assuming the presidency.
\nThe indictment, the first against a former U.S. president, injects a local district attorney\u2019s office into the heart of a national presidential race and ushers in criminal proceedings in a city that the ex-president for decades called home. Arriving at a time of deep political divisions, the charges are likely to reinforce rather than reshape dueling perspectives of those who see accountability as long overdue and those who, like Trump, feel the Republican is being targeted for political purposes by a Democratic prosecutor.
\nTrump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly assailed the investigation, called the indictment \u201cpolitical persecution\u201d and predicted it would damage Democrats in 2024. In a statement confirming the charges, defense lawyers Susan Necheles and Joseph Tacopina said Trump \u201cdid not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.\u201d
\nA spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office confirmed the indictment and said prosecutors had reached out to Trump\u2019s defense team to coordinate a surrender. Tacopina said Trump is \u201clikely\u201d to turn himself in on Tuesday.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re working out those logistics right now,\u201d Tacopina said on NBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d show Friday morning. \u201cHe\u2019s not gonna hole up in Mar-a-Lago.\u201d
\nTacopina insisted that Trump would not take a plea deal: \u201cThere\u2019s no crime.\u201d
\nTrump was asked to surrender Friday but his lawyers said the Secret Service needed additional time as they made security preparations, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they couldn\u2019t publicly discuss security details.
\nDistrict Attorney Alvin Bragg left his office Thursday evening without commenting.
\nThe case centers on well-chronicled allegations from a period in 2016 when Trump\u2019s celebrity past collided with his political ambitions. Prosecutors for months scrutinized money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he feared would go public with claims that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him.
\nThe timing of the indictment appeared to come as a surprise to Trump campaign officials following news reports that criminal charges were likely weeks away. The former president was at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, on Thursday and filmed an interview with a conservative commentator earlier in the day.
\nFor a man whose presidency was defined by one obliterated norm after another, the indictment sets up yet another never-before-seen spectacle \u2014 a former president having his fingerprints and mug shot taken, and then facing arraignment. For security reasons, his booking is expected to be carefully choreographed to avoid crowds inside or outside the courthouse.
\nThe prosecution also means that Trump will have to simultaneously fight for his freedom and political future, while also fending off potentially more perilous legal threats, including investigations into attempts by him and his allies to undo the 2020 presidential election as well as into the hoarding of hundreds of classified documents. AP<\/p>\n
In fact, New York was until recently seen as an unlikely contender to be the first place to prosecute Trump, who continues to face long-running investigations in Atlanta and Washington that could also result in charges. Unlike those inquiries, the Manhattan case concerns allegations against Trump that occurred before he became president and are unrelated to his much-publicized efforts to overturn the election.
\nThe indictment comes as Trump seeks to reassert control of the Republican Party and stave off a slew of one-time allies who may threaten his bid for the presidential nomination. An expected leading rival in the race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, called the indictment \u201cun-American\u201d in a statement Thursday night that pointedly did not mention Trump\u2019s name.
\nIn 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\u2019s indictment. The case may also turn in part on the testimony of a key witness, Trump\u2019s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges arising from the hush money payments, including making false statements.
\nThe probe\u2019s fate seemed uncertain until word got out in early March that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a signal that prosecutors were close to bringing charges.
\nTrump\u2019s attorneys declined the invitation, but a lawyer closely allied with the former president briefly testified in an effort to undercut Cohen\u2019s credibility.
\nTrump himself raised anticipation that he would be indicted soon, issuing a statement earlier this month in which he predicted an imminent arrest and called for protests. He did not repeat that call in a fresh statement Thursday, but the New York Police Department told its 36,000 officers to be fully mobilized and ready to respond to any potential protests or unrest.
\nLate in the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.
\nCohen was then reimbursed by Trump\u2019s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.
\nEarlier in 2016, Cohen also arranged for the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer to pay McDougal $150,000 to squelch her story of a Trump affair in a journalistically dubious practice known as \u201ccatch-and-kill.\u201d
\nThe payments to the women were intended to buy secrecy, but they backfired almost immediately as details of the arrangements leaked to the news media.
\nFederal prosecutors in New York ultimately charged Cohen in 2018 with violating federal campaign finance laws, arguing that the payments amounted to impermissible help to Trump\u2019s presidential campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to those charges and unrelated tax evasion counts and served time in federal prison.
\nTrump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements \u2014 obliquely referred to in charging documents as \u201cIndividual 1\u201d \u2014 but U.S. prosecutors at the time balked at bringing charges against him. The Justice Department has a longtime policy against indicting a sitting president in federal court.
\nBragg\u2019s predecessor as district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., then took up the investigation in 2019. While that probe initially focused on the hush money payments, Vance\u2019s prosecutors moved on to other matters, including an examination of Trump\u2019s business dealings and tax strategies.
\nVance ultimately charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with tax fraud related to fringe benefits paid to some of the company\u2019s top executives.
\nThe hush money matter became known around the D.A.\u2019s office as the \u201czombie case,\u201d with prosecutors revisiting it periodically but never opting to bring charges.
\nBragg saw it differently. After the Trump Organization was convicted on the tax fraud charges in December, he brought fresh eyes to the well-worn case, hiring longtime white-collar prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to oversee the probe and convening a new grand jury.
\nCohen became a key witness, meeting with prosecutors nearly two-dozen times, turning over emails, recordings and other evidence and testifying before the grand jury.
\nTrump has long decried the Manhattan investigation as \u201cthe greatest witch hunt in history.\u201d He has also lashed out at Bragg, calling the prosecutor, who is Black, racist against white people.
\nThe criminal charges in New York are the latest salvo in a profound schism between Trump and his hometown \u2014 a reckoning for a one-time favorite son who grew rich and famous building skyscrapers, hobnobbing with celebrities and gracing the pages of the city\u2019s gossip press.
\nTrump, who famously riffed in 2016 that he \u201ccould stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody\u201d and \u201cwouldn\u2019t lose voters,\u201d now faces a threat to his liberty in a borough where more than 75% of voters \u2014 many of them potential jurors \u2014 went against him in the last election. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK, 31 Mar: Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, a historic reckoning after years of investigations into his personal, political and business dealings and an abrupt jolt to his bid to retake the White House. The exact nature of the charges was unclear Friday because the indictment remained under seal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-214044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}