Former President Donald Trump responded on Thursday to being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury by saying that the case was an example of political persecution and election interference.
The New York Times reported that the felony indictment over his alleged $130,000 hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels was filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The indictment will be announced in the coming days and Trump will be compelled to surrender and face arraignment, according to the report. The former president is now the first former president in U.S. history to ever face criminal charges.
“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats — the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country — have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”
A couple of the examples of political persecution that Trump mentioned in his statement were the investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia and his first impeachment.
“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,” Trump claimed. “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done.”
Trump claimed that Democrats “have cheated countless times over the decades” and that they have weaponized law enforcement agencies to go after him.
“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace,” Trump said. “Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!”
Trump predicted that he believes that “this Witch-Hunt” will backfire on the Democrats.
The lead prosecutors in the case met with the grand jury on Thursday and read them the criminal statutes before they voted. A few hours later the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office and began filing the indictment.
The news comes as The Wall Street Journal reported that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has started examining an alleged $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The report said that prosecutors could use the alleged hush money payment to McDougal to bring additional potential charges against Trump. Prosecutors could also use the McDougal evidence to try to establish an alleged pattern of conduct by the former president since alleged participants have claimed that Trump played a key role in the deals, the report said.
David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer, gave testimony this month that tied Trump directly to the payment to McDougal “and to an alleged broader scheme to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign,” the report said.
Lawyers for the former president have claimed that he was not aware of the payment and he has denied having an affair with McDougal.
McDougal claims that the alleged 10-month affair started in 2006 and that she broke it off in April 2007 because she felt guilty about it. The timeline, if accurate, would mean that the affair started a few months after Barron Trump was born in March 2006.
Trump faces additional legal jeopardy in three other criminal investigations into him, including a federal investigation into his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, an investigation in Georgia into his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, and another federal investigation into his handling of U.S. government records after leaving office.