A grand jury in New York has voted to indict Donald Trump on a felony charge related to hush money payments made to silence claims of an alleged sexual affair, according to multiple major U.S. media reports, in a historic and highly consequential move against a former U.S. president.
The New York Times and CNN first reported the news Thursday, citing multiple sources familiar with the grand jury’s vote, which remains under seal. The Washington Post, ABC and Reuters have subsequently published their own reports citing sources familiar with the situation.
The Associated Press said it had confirmed the news with Trump’s lawyer. None of the reports confirmed the specific charge Trump is facing.
The charges are certain to reshape Trump’s re-election bid and the overall race for president in 2024, and Trump has vowed to stay in the race regardless of whether he is indicted.
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“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement calling himself “a completely innocent person.”
Lawyer Joe Tacopina, who is representing Trump in the case, said in a statement: “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been investigating Trump’s role in payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed they had affairs with Trump a decade ago.
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has attacked the investigation, was expected to surrender to authorities in the coming days, according to the reports.
Trump claimed on March 18 that his arrest was imminent, and issued an extraordinary call for his supporters to protest.
The development prompted police in New York to set up barricades outside a courthouse in anticipation of unrest. Trump was never indicted last week, but raised more than US$1.5M for his 2024 presidential campaign off the speculation.
The grand jury in Manhattan has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he orchestrated payments in 2016 to Daniels and McDougal to silence them about their claims of sexual encounters they said they had with Trump years before he entered politics.
Trump denies the encounters occurred, says he did nothing wrong and has called the investigation a “witch hunt” by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging his 2024 presidential campaign.
Daniels, as well as at least two former Trump aides, have been among the witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.
Cohen has said that at Trump’s direction, he arranged payments totalling $280,000 to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. According to Cohen, the payouts were to buy their silence about Trump, who was then in the thick of his first presidential campaign.
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Cohen and federal prosecutors said Trump’s company paid him $420,000 as reimbursement for the $130,000 payment to Daniels and to cover bonuses and other supposed expenses. The company classified those payments internally as legal expenses. The $150,000 payment to McDougal was made by the then-publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, which kept her story from coming to light.
Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.
Trump took a defiant stance at a rally Saturday in Waco, Texas, disparaging the prosecutors investigating him and predicting his vindication as he rallied supporters in a city made famous by deadly resistance against law enforcement.
With a hand over his heart, Trump stood at attention when his rally opened with a song called Justice for All performed by a choir of people imprisoned for their roles in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Some footage from the Capitol attack was shown on big screens displayed at the rally site as the choir sang the national anthem and a recording played of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The display opened Trump’s first rally of his 2024 Republican presidential campaign. He then launched into a speech brimming with resentments and framed the probes, including the New York grand jury investigation, as political attacks on him and his followers.
Trump faces other potential legal perils as he seeks to reassert control of the Republican Party and stave off a slew of one-time allies who are seeking or are likely to oppose him for the presidential nomination.
The district attorney in Atlanta has for two years been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 vote count, and has said charges in that case are “imminent.” And a U.S. Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and his efforts to reverse his election loss.
— with files from The Associated Press
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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