Former US president Donald Trump and his top advisers were surprised by the news of his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over hush money payments, having expected no charges until at least the end of this month and potentially never at all.
Trump and his aides had said that recent reporting about the grand jury taking a break from next week meant prosecutors in the district attorney’s office were reconsidering whether to seek an indictment over the matter.
However, that belief proved to be misplaced when Trump was alerted at Mar-a-Lago to the indictment by his advisers, some of whom had returned to Washington.
Photo: AFP
Trump issued a statement in response to the news, calling the prosecution a political ploy and an effort to hurt his presidential campaign.
Trump accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who led the investigation, of trying to hurt his electoral chances.
“This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement.
The charges remain sealed, but are expected to touch on US$130,000 that was made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, through Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Cohen in 2018 pleaded guilty to federal charges over the money.
Trump’s mood toward the investigation has fluctuated in the past few weeks — from criticizing the prospect of criminal charges, to growing impatient and insisting they should charge him already, and then going back to attacking the investigation.
After the first rally of his campaign in Texas, Trump told an NBC News reporter he was not frustrated by the case.
“I’m not frustrated by it. It’s a fake investigation,” Trump said. “This is fake news, and NBC is one of the worst. Don’t ask me any more questions.”
Trump became more optimistic this week, saying that reports about the grand jury taking a break for most of this month could mean the district attorney was having doubts about prosecuting the case and that it was “all over.”
However, shortly after 5pm on Thursday, his campaign advisers learned from a New York Times alert that Trump had been indicted, catching them off guard in part because they assumed they would hear about it first from the Trump lawyers, who had themselves assumed they would confidentially hear it first from prosecutors.
Although Trump had indicated that he expected to be one of the first people to be told if he was charged in the case, when the news actually arrived, Trump appears to have been one of the very last people to find out, sources said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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