By Aaron Miller-
Donald Trump will face the first criminal charges of his life for his role in paying hush money to a porn actress, Stormy Daniels.
The former president whose personal life has been characterised by probes and allegations, and stained with two impeachments, will now face criminal hearing for paying Daniels, who had also tried, but failed to sue him for defamation a few years back.
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The charges make Trump the first former president charged with a crime – an event that threatens his ambitions for another crack at the White House in 2024.
Trump, who is considered the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. The indictment remains under seal.
Stormy Daniels claims she had an adulterous affair with the former president, and was paid $130,000 to keep quiet, but dishonourably reneged on the deal to expose Trump.
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Although the payment was legal, Trump allegedly recorded it as a business expense. Falsifying business records is illegal in New York.
Trump is expected to appear in court to face the charges and enter a plea in New York next Tuesday
He denies wrongdoing, and the affair, saying the indictment is “political persecution”
US media say Trump faces more than two dozen charges linked to business fraud .
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement Thursday evening that it had contacted Trump’s lawyer to arrange Trump’s surrender.
“This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected,” a spokesperson for Bragg’s office said.
When Trump eventually appears in New York at the criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan, where he will be fingerprinted, photographed and eventually arraigned before a judge.
The charges will be enumerated at the arraignment.
“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement Thursday. “The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.”
The “Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” Trump said. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here.”
Though Trump, a resident of Florida, is expected to surrender, if he refuses to do so, he will likely face arrest and extradition to New York.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely considered Trump’s biggest rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said he would not approve such an extradition.
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American,” DeSantis said in a statement that did not explicitly name Trump. “Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.”
The highly anticipated charges are the first Trump has faced as a result of a number of ongoing investigations, including a Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, and Justice Department probes into his handling of classified information and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection – all investigations with significant heft that could produce far more serious charges.
The indictment is the culmination of investigation probing Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 by Trump’s former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, in a bid to keep Daniels quiet about an extramarital affair she says she had with Trump a decade earlier. Cohen also arranged a similar payment through an intermediary to another woman for the same purpose.
Cohen paid Daniels through a shell company and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company recorded the payments as “legal expenses.” In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations after prosecutors said the money amounted to an unrecorded gift to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and is expected to plead not guilty. He has derided the investigation as a politically motivated “witch hunt” and has gone after Bragg himself, painting the prosecutor, who is Black, as a “reverse racist” funded by major Democratic donors with a partisan ax to grind.
Congressional Republicans have largely fallen into lockstep with Trump. Republicans on the House Judiciary committee earlier this month took the unprecedented step of calling on Bragg to testify over the charges, which at that point were only hypothetical, setting up a sparring match between the two entities.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a statement Thursday that Bragg had “irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election.”
“As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump. The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” McCarthy said..
Authorities have erected metal barricades around the criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan ahead of a possible indictment; similar barricades were put up in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Trump has previously insisted that he will continue to seek the Republican nomination even if he is facing criminal charges – and that he will use the indictment to galvanize his supporters.
The GOP and its voters now find itself in the precarious and confounding position of having its standard bearer be an accused criminal.
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