Former US president Donald Trump has been criminally charged for directing hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Donald Trump was due to surrender at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office today, and will likely be fingerprinted prior to appearing before a judge for an arraignment.
Donald Trump is the first US president to face criminal indictment. He is expected to plead not guilty at a Manhattan courthouse. The specific charges in the indictment by a grand jury convened by Bragg, a Democrat, have yet to be disclosed.
Donald Trump has reportedly hired Todd Blanche, a prominent white-collar criminal defence lawyer and former federal prosecutor. Blanche and other Trump lawyers on Monday urged the judge not to allow videography, photography and radio coverage of the arraignment.
The Manhattan grand jury that indicted Donald Trump last week, heard evidence for months this year about a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 US presidential campaign.
Stormy Daniels has said that she was paid by Donald Trump to keep silent about a sexual encounter she had with him at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006. Trump denies having had any such relationship with her.
According to Stormy Daniels, she stayed in touch with Donald Trump for a while because he offered her a role on his reality show. She later alleged that when she was planning to go on TV during the 2016 presidential campaign and discuss the sexual encounter with Trump, she received what prosecutors say was a $130,000 payment to hush up.
In 2016, when Trump was the Republican presidential nominee, his personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid a $130,000 "hush money" payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about the 2006 tryst. Trump denied the charges and even accused Daniels of "extortion" and a "total con job.
Four years earlier, Donald Trump's lawyer and fixer Cohen turned on him and began cooperating with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal criminal charges. He said the payments were done to protect Donald Trump’s chances in the 2016 presidential election.
Even as Donald Trump faces criminal charges, he has widened his lead over his rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential nominating contest, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some 48% of self-described Republicans say they want Trump to be their party's presidential nominee.