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Grand Jury Voted to Indict Donald Trump – Distraction from LGBTQ Shooter?

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According to knowledgeable sources, a Manhattan grand jury has made a decision to indict Donald Trump for his involvement in making hush-money payments to a pornographic actress just before the 2016 election. This development initiates a legal process in which the ex-president is expected to be compelled to travel to New York and face the accusations.

The people familiar with the matter stated that Mr. Trump was indicted by the grand jury on Thursday, marking the first instance in which a former president has been charged with a criminal offense. However, the indictment, which was requested by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office under Alvin Bragg, remains undisclosed.

In New York, charges are regularly kept confidential until the defendants appear in court for the first time.

There was no immediate comment from a representative of Mr. Trump or a spokesperson for Mr. Bragg.

Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, is leading the case against Mr. Trump, but it is far from certain that he will succeed. Previously, Cyrus Vance Jr., the former Manhattan District Attorney, and federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against Mr. Trump in a case related to the hush-money payments. In the event of a trial, a conviction would likely necessitate a jury accepting the testimony of Michael Cohen, a former attorney for Trump who has had his own legal difficulties and pleaded guilty to multiple federal felonies in 2018, including a campaign-finance violation for the payment to the pornographic actress, as well as charges of lying to a bank and to Congress.

According to Cohen, Mr. Trump instructed him to pay $130,000 to Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election in exchange for her agreement to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with the then-presidential candidate. Mr. Trump has refuted any claim of a relationship with Ms. Daniels and has asserted that he relied on his attorney’s advice.

Even if he is found guilty, the New York state case against Mr. Trump is unlikely to have any legal impact on his presidential candidacy. There is no constitutional requirement that candidates for the highest office have a clean record, and it is commonly acknowledged that states are prohibited from imposing their own restrictions on presidential candidates, according to Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law.

The potential indictment could have different implications for Mr. Trump’s political future. Despite his numerous legal issues and controversies, he has managed to maintain the support of his followers and has utilized the prospect of prosecution as a rallying point to raise funds and argue that he is being unjustly targeted for political reasons. However, the case may cause some Republicans to view him unfavorably, as evidenced by a number of polls, and could sway some voters towards an alternative candidate.

The investigation into the hush-money payment, which was prompted in part by a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal in 2018, was the lengthiest of multiple ongoing criminal investigations into Mr. Trump. While the case focuses on his alleged behavior before and during the early part of his presidency, other inquiries are investigating his actions during his later years in the White House and after leaving office. The outcome of those investigations will have greater consequences, as they involve more serious alleged misconduct that could carry more significant penalties.

The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into the handling of classified documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as well as Mr. Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Meanwhile, Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, is investigating efforts by Mr. Trump and his supporters to influence the results of Georgia’s 2020 election.

The 2018 Wall Street Journal investigation revealed secret payoffs and a bungled cover-up operation that led to a criminal investigation into the former president’s conduct involving hush money payments. Despite any potential criminal charges, Mr. Trump has declared his intention to remain in the presidential race. He has an incentive to do so, as the Office of Legal Counsel within the Justice Department has stated that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

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Although Mr. Cohen’s history as Mr. Trump’s “fixer” and criminal convictions might make him a challenging witness for a jury to rely on, his account of Mr. Trump’s involvement in the hush money payments is corroborated by circumstantial evidence. Phone records obtained by federal investigators show that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen spoke twice shortly before the latter made arrangements to wire funds to Ms. Daniels’s attorney in October 2016. Additionally, they were in communication earlier that month, as Mr. Trump’s associates in the tabloid world warned Mr. Cohen of the potential exposure of Ms. Daniels’s story, according to unsealed search warrant applications in Mr. Cohen’s federal case.

In his 2018 federal guilty plea, Mr. Cohen confessed to making an excessive campaign contribution to Mr. Trump by paying Ms. Daniels to keep quiet. Federal prosecutors alleged that the amount he gave to Ms. Daniels to prevent potentially damaging news about the then-presidential candidate was equivalent to Mr. Cohen making a donation of $130,000, far exceeding what federal law permits for direct donations to Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Beginning in 2017, Mr. Trump and his trust reimbursed Mr. Cohen each month for the payment to Ms. Daniels. According to federal prosecutors, the Trump Organization falsely recorded the payments as compensation for legal services that Mr. Cohen never rendered, disguising their actual purpose. In 2019, Mr. Cohen testified before Congress that Mr. Trump had personally approved the plan.

The primary details of the hush-money scheme have been publicly known for years and have been scrutinized by federal prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office and state prosecutors under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Mr. Vance. Mr. Vance’s office investigated the matter in 2018 but halted its inquiry until 2019, when federal prosecutors claimed to have completed their investigation into campaign finance. Mr. Vance stated that “we had been asked to stand down in our investigation by the U.S. attorney because it overlapped with what they were looking into… after Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty, we were surprised that the investigation didn’t go further.”

When they resumed their investigation in 2019, Mr. Vance’s prosecutors considered charging Mr. Trump with falsifying business records to conceal the actual purpose of the checks paid to Mr. Cohen as reimbursement for the Daniels payment, according to Mark Pomerantz’s book “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.” This charge was only a misdemeanor and could only become a felony if the records were shown to be falsified to commit or conceal another crime. They investigated a theory that the fraudulent invoices covered up a federal campaign-finance violation related to the payment to Ms. Daniels, but no New York court had ever officially recognized that legal principle, as Mr. Pomerantz noted.

Mr. Vance and his team decided that a separate felony case against Mr. Trump connected to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be too hazardous and dropped it, according to Mr. Pomerantz.

They then turned their attention to allegations that Mr. Trump exaggerated the worth of his assets on financial records he submitted to lenders and others.

In 2022, when Mr. Bragg took over from Mr. Vance, he decided not to pursue a case based on Mr. Trump’s financial records, claiming that it was not yet ready. His hesitation led to Mr. Pomerantz and another senior prosecutor resigning from the office.

Around a year later, Mr. Bragg’s team began presenting evidence to a grand jury regarding the payment to Ms. Daniels and how Mr. Trump and his company compensated Mr. Cohen, who had used his own line of credit for the hush-money transaction, according to insiders familiar with the investigation.

Prosecutors have referred to the hush-money inquiry as the “zombie case” since the district attorney’s office has frequently shelved and restarted the investigation, as per Mr. Pomerantz.

Mr. Trump has seized on the investigation’s ups and downs to raise concerns about Mr. Bragg’s motives.

“Now, they fall back on the old, and rebuked case which has been rejected by every prosecutor’s office that has looked at this,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site in March, seemingly referring to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the prior Manhattan district attorney’s administration.

Mr. Trump has utilized social media to suggest potential defenses, claiming that he relied on Mr. Cohen’s guidance and that he was a victim of extortion by Ms. Daniels. Ms. Daniels’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

Moreover, Mr. Trump has contended that the payment to Mr. Cohen and the subsequent reimbursement occurred so long ago that the statute of limitations for prosecutors to file criminal charges has elapsed.

Prosecutors could counter that the alleged behavior isn’t too old since Mr. Trump resided out of state for the majority of the past six years, pausing the statute of limitations. Additionally, New York has extended the time allotted to bring charges during the pandemic.