Washington – Donald Trump yesterday became the first former president of the United States formally indicted for a crime in the country’s history, after the New York Grand Jury indicted him for paying porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about the relationship. extramarital that they maintained, in a ruling that the former president described as “electoral interference at the highest level.”
Trump, who always questioned the process, said he was innocent and refused to testify in the case, was charged in the framework of an investigation for the alleged payment of a bribe to Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, actress and director of pornographic films.
The 76-year-old ex-president is accused of being responsible for buying Daniels’ silence about the extramarital affair they had for $130,000, before the 2016 elections, which the billionaire won.
“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘get Trump,’ but now they have done the unthinkable: indict a completely innocent person in an act of blatant election interference,” Trump warned in his first reaction after the jury’s decision. And he added that the accusation constitutes “political persecution and electoral interference at the highest level in history.”
In a statement, he said for sure that “Americans will realize exactly what the radical Democratic left is doing.” “Everybody can see it. Our movement and our party, united and strong, will defeat Alvin Bragg first and then Joe Biden, and we will kick all these corrupt Democrats out of government to make America great again,” he concluded.
New York authorities notified Trump’s lawyer that the former president was indicted.
It is expected that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, whom the ex-president severely questioned, will negotiate with Trump to accept the position, and if he agrees, he will be booked as required by protocol, that is, he will be photographed and his fingerprints taken.
Prosecutors had offered Trump the opportunity to testify before a grand jury, an opportunity that is generally extended to potential defendants when an indictment is imminent. Trump refused, rejecting the charges and chalking the entire process up to a witch hunt.
When the Grand Jury had been meeting for about three hours yesterday, according to the Sputnik agency, several of the main prosecutors in the investigation entered the court secretary’s office through a back door to begin the process of presenting the accusation.
Although Trump is at the center of several criminal investigations, he has so far dodged prosecution. The tycoon directly linked the cause with his claims to return to the White House next year, as he had indicated days ago. “I think it is a way to cheat in the elections. It is electoral interference, ”he said two days ago on Fox News. And he added: “We are dealing with dishonest people, bandits, and people, I think, who hate our country.”
After the press announced that he could become the first former president to sit on the accused bench, Trump stated on March 18 on his Truth Social network that he was going to be “arrested” and taken to appear before March 21. a court, although none of that finally happened.
Furthermore, the former president predicted a picture of “potential death and destruction” that would exist in the country if he was finally charged.
Prosecutor Bragg, a Democrat elected to this position by popular vote, formed the grand jury in January following an investigation into a payment to Daniels more than seven years ago, made weeks before the 2016 election, which Trump won.
The lawyer Michael Cohen, who was the author of the payment to Danield, celebrated yesterday that “for the first time in the history of the nation, a president has been imputed” and highlighted the fact that “no one is above the law, nor Not even a former president. “Today’s impeachment is not the end of this chapter, but the beginning,” Cohen, a former Trump attorney, was quoted as saying by CNN.
And Daniels’ lawyer, Clark Brewster, wrote on Twitter: “The indictment of Donald Trump is no cause for joy. May truth and justice prevail. No one is above the law.”
The same CNN quotes sources close to Trump who assume that he will appear in Manhattan once the accusations are made and that he will give a speech after the preliminary hearing.
The former head of the White House received the news of the accusation at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, probably with surprise because, according to international agencies, his entourage did not expect a Grand Jury decision until the end of April.
In any case, Trump’s presidential ambition is not in danger because US law does not provide for prohibitions of this type, although it does prohibit the vote of those who have been convicted.
Trump himself had already announced that he would continue his campaign in case of impeachment.
Source: Ambito
