AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former President Donald Trump for his role in hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing “four people with knowledge of the matter.”
The Times called it 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.” CNN and other media outlets quickly confirmed the report through their own sources.
Just before the news broke of the indictment, NBC News reported that law enforcement had begun adding additional security had been put in place around the lower Manhattan courthouse where the grand jury had been meeting.
The probe into Trump by the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office began over five years ago and focuses around a $130,000 payment made to Daniels just ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, made the payment but was allegedly later reimbursed by Trump.
The grand jury convened by Bragg has been looking into charges related to allegations Trump falsifying business records to conceal the payment.
Cohen, who has become a fierce critic of Trump, has sat for multiple interviews with prosecutors and has told reporters he believes Trump will be indicted
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in 2018 for making the payments “at the direction” of Trump, which violated campaign finance laws and was allegedly meant to cover up Trump’s extramarital affair with Daniels.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in mid-March urging his supporters to ‘TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” and claimed he “WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.” While Trump was not indicted on his timeline, the former president continued to post about the looming indictment, raging against Bragg in particular.
Trump shared a link with a split-screen image of him holding a bat on one side with an image of Bragg’s head on the right, which many critics dubbed an explicit threat.
The Drudge Report’s headline on the post read, “PSYCHO DON!”
“THREATENS MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY,” read the second line of the headline. Trump had also been roundly condemned as racist for calling Bragg a “SOROS BACKED ANIMAL.”
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