A New York grand jury on Thursday indicted Donald Trump over hush money payments made to a porn star during his 2016 campaign.
Trump has now become the first former president of the United States to face criminal prosecution, but the charges have not been made public.
Trump is expected to be fingerprinted and photographed when he surrenders to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York early next week.
The historic indictment of the 76-year-old Republican — who denies all wrongdoing in connection with the payments made ahead of the election that sent him to the White House — is certain to upend the current presidential race in which Trump hopes to regain office.
And it will forever mark the legacy of the former leader, who survived two impeachments and kept prosecutors at bay over everything from the US Capitol riot to missing classified files — only to land in court over a sex scandal involving Stormy Daniels, a 44-year-old adult movie actress.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed that it had contacted Trump’s lawyers Thursday evening to “coordinate his surrender” for arraignment in New York — with the felony charges against him to be revealed at that point.
Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the indictment now threatens to puncture.
But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House — which examined his strong-arm tactics on the international stage, his attempts to overturn the election and his summoning of a mob to the steps of the U.S. Capitol — this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Trump’s presidency.
