Donald Trump is expected to be charged with a felony after being indicted by a grand jury in New York over hush money payments
As the first former US president to be charged with a crime, Donald Trump’s effort to win the presidency again in 2024 has been called into question after he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury over hush money payments made to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.
Trump’s attorneys were contacted on Thursday night to “arrange his surrender” on unnamed allegations, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which has been conducting the investigation.
According to five people with knowledge of the situation, the grand jury decided on Thursday to indict 76-year-old Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his part in giving money to porn star Stormy Daniels in an effort to get her to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
According to the BBC, it was “a historic development that would upend the 2024 presidential election and permanently label him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal accusations.”
Trump, who served as the 45th US President from 2017 to 2021, is scheduled to fly from Florida to New York on Monday and appear in court on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke to CBS News.
The hearing is anticipated to be brief. He will have the counts in the indictment read to him during the hearing, which is expected to last 10 to 15 minutes.
Regarding the payments made prior to the election, Donald Trump has refuted any impropriety.
The former president referred to his prosecution as “political oppression and election interference at the highest level in history” and accused Democrats of “weaponizing our judicial system to target a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States.”
In a statement, Trump’s lawyers, Joseph Tacopina and Susan Necheles, asserted that their client “did not commit any crime” and promised to “vigorously battle this political case in court.”
A payment made just a few days before Trump was chosen as president in 2016 is what gave rise to the case. In exchange for Daniels’ silence on an alleged affair, his former attorney Michael Cohen set up a wire transfer of USD 130,000 to her.
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