Trump Indicted By Manhattan Grand Jury Over Porn Star Hush Payment

Former President Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury over hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels, according to the NY Times, citing four people familiar with the matter.

The still-sealed felony indictment, which comes as 2024 campaign season comes into focus, makes Trump the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.

The exact charges are not yet known, however the Times expects them to be announced in the coming days by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Prosecutors working for DA Alvin L. Bragg will ask Trump to surrender and face arraignment on said unknown charges.

[U]nlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign. -NY Times

The move also comes just before the grand jury takes a one-month break until late April.

Interestingly, as The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported, this month-long delay came after an attorney in former President Donald Trump’s orbit who testified in front of a Manhattan grand jury earlier this month believes that there has been a shift in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the 45th president.

“Well, I think I got through to them, because [Monday] I understand they called back another witness by the name of David Pecker, who used to run the National Enquirer,” Costello, a former Michael Cohen attorney, told Newsmax on Tuesday.

“Basically, what they’re doing is really gerrymandering this,” he said of Bragg’s probe into Trump.

Costello said he had represented Cohen, himself a former Trump lawyer, and told reporters last week that he does not believe Cohen is a credible witness against Trump.

Sounds like that wasn’t the case.

The prosecution’s star witness in the case is former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about sleeping with Trump. Cohen said that Trump directed him to buy her silence (contrary to a 2018 letter from his lawyer claiming the opposite), and says that the Trump organization helped cover it up.

Meanwhile, this didn’t age well…