Former US President Donald Trump has become the first ex-president to be indicted for a crime. The indictment relates to an alleged cover-up of a hush-money payment made before the 2016 presidential election. The payment was made to ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had an affair with Trump years before. The grand jury in New York City, which has been meeting since January, indicted Trump after hearing testimony from a number of witnesses. The specific charges are not yet known, but several US media outlets have reported that they relate to the way Trump reimbursed his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen for the payments to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Prosecutors allege that he improperly labelled the payments as legal expenses.
The charge, normally a misdemeanour, could be upgraded to a felony if prosecutors link the payment to violations of election law. The payment to Daniels, right before the 2016 vote, could be considered an illegal campaign contribution. While Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing, he has said that the payment was to protect his reputation from a false accusation.
Trump has called himself “a completely innocent person” and cast the indictment as the latest in a line of actions that he says are designed to “destroy” his Make America Great Again movement. He has accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Democrat who led the investigation, of trying to hurt his electoral chances. Trump is facing an array of other investigations beyond the Manhattan case. On the federal level, the Department of Justice is investigating the retention of top-secret government documents at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The efforts by many of the same players in the latter case were also the subject of a special grand jury investigation in the state of Georgia. The panel’s foreperson said the special grand jury recommended multiple criminal indictments. With many serious cases looming around the other investigations, some legal experts have questioned the wisdom of the Manhattan case becoming the first to result in charges.
Republicans have framed the indictment as a political prosecution, accusing Bragg of weaponising the criminal justice system. Democrats have been less vocal in the hours after the indictment became known, but some of the former president’s critics have described the case as a long-overdue dose of accountability. President Joe Biden, a Democrat who is expected to announce he is running for re-election next year, has not yet commented.
A judge will likely unseal the Manhattan charges in the coming days, and Trump will have to travel there to be fingerprinted and photographed, known as a surrender date, which a court official said was expected on Tuesday. He will then appear before a judge and be formally charged, followed by a decision on whether he should be released on bail or taken into custody. If Trump indeed turns himself in, a relatively quick process and release is expected. A former president is not likely to be paraded in cuffs across a pavement or through a crowded court. Legal experts say that any potential trial is still at least more than a year away, raising the possibility that the former US president could face a jury in a Manhattan courtroom during or even after the 2024 presidential campaign as he seeks a return to the White House.