Donald Trump indictment: former US president becomes first to face criminal charges – latest updates | Donald Trump

There will be an awful lot of words written and spoken in the next few days in reaction to the indictment of Donald Trump last night. But one reaction that is sure to be replayed again and again is the gasp heard live on Fox News last night as the story broke.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins has tweeted that during this morning’s interview rounds, Donald Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina confirmed that the former president was “shocked” by the indictment. “It was shock because it was actually coming to fruition,” Tacopina told ABC, she reports.

Mike Allen’s Axios newsletter just dropped, and he offers this summing up of the implications of the indictment for the race for the Republican nomination for next year’s election, writing:

President Trump, who has spent his life ruthlessly manoeuvering to get his way, now is at the mercy of a justice system he can’t bully – and, ultimately, in the hands of a Manhattan jury. [But] of all the investigations Trump faces, the case by Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is viewed by most legal experts as the thinnest – unless the prosecutor has something surprising up his sleeve.

Most Republicans think this helps Trump in the short run – and could even provide a glide path to the Republican nomination. This freezes the race at a time when Trump holds a huge lead in Republican polls. That’s likely to grow with the saturation coverage ahead.

Indictment-themed Republican fundraising texts and emails started instantly, with Trump as a martyr [and] with Trump taking up all that oxygen, it’ll be even harder for Florida Gov Ron DeSantis – or any Trump rival – to gain traction.

Nevertheless, as Allen goes on to note:

For the general election, with suburban women as a potentially decisive bloc, it’s a totally different story. An indicted (at least) standard-bearer isn’t a great look for attracting swing voters.

Tulsi Gabbard, a former congressional representative for Hawaii and candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 election, has described the indictment of Donald Trump as “a despicable, extremely dangerous turning point for our country”.

Gabbard, who left the Democratic party in October 2022, tweeted:

The politicized indictment of former President Trump is just the latest example of the Dem establishment putting their own personal and partisan political interest ahead of the interests of the American people and our country. It is a despicable, extremely dangerous turning point for our country.

Our columnist Marina Hyde has turned her attention to Donald Trump this morning, writing that in Trump’s fantasy comeback, he’ll be wearing handcuffs:

It’s remarkable that after all the hardcore and extreme political and financial stuff Trump pulled in office and beyond, it’s the fallout from an alleged textbook generic shag that’s left him most exposed. To adapt the calcified cliche about Al Capone, they’re trying to get him on sex evasion. It remains highly unclear that they’ll succeed, and even less likely that jail time would be served.

He becomes the first president to be indicted and face criminal charges, an accolade to take its place in his trophy cabinet alongside being the first US president to be impeached twice, and indeed the first president to incite an insurrection against the US government.

I think this is the point at which I am supposed to type that Trump has always denied having sex with Stormy Daniels, despite the matter of this six-figure payment to her. He also denies any wrongdoing in relation to the charges. Taking him at his word (!), you have to wonder how far he’d go to bury something he did actually do, if that’s what he’d pay for something he didn’t.

Read more of Marina Hyde’s column here: Now we know: in Trump’s fantasy comeback, he’ll be wearing handcuffs

Here is a video clip of the small band of Trump supporters who gathered at Mar-a-Lago last night to protest against the indictment of the former president.

The New York Times is reporting that “The felony indictment charging Donald Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star in the days before the 2016 presidential election includes more than two dozen counts, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.”

However, with the indictment sealed, it still isn’t clear exactly what the former president is to be charged with. The Hill has this analysis of what the case may consist of:

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has been probing a $130,000 hush money payment that Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election.

A hush payment by itself is legal, but outside legal experts have suggested the indictment is likely to focus on charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors would first need to show that Trump, with an intent to defraud, was personally involved in improperly designating reimbursements a legal expense.

That still amounts to a misdemeanor under New York law, carrying up to one year of jail time per count.

But the inclusion of a felony charge suggests prosecutors believe they can make a case tying the record falsification to another crime, augmenting the maximum jail time to four years per count.

Trump has acknowledged the payment to Daniels, though he denies her claim the two had sexual relations. Trump’s attorneys have also claimed that Trump made the payment to protect false information from hurting his marriage. They have contended he did not make the payment to influence the election, nodding to the possibility that Bragg could seek felony charges by asserting the payments violated campaign laws in some fashion.

There is some analysis from political website The Hill this morning, suggesting that not all Democrats are cheering the indictment. It writes:

A handful of liberals are blasting the decision as a strategic mistake – politically speaking – since the Manhattan case features the least serious of the accusations Trump faces across various other investigations. Given the seriousness of the potential charges in those pending cases, some liberals fear that Bragg’s decision will undermine any indictments that follow.

“After inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol, pressuring local officials to overturn the 2020 election, receiving financial kickbacks from foreign powers, and numerous other crimes during his presidency, it’s embarrassing and infuriating that the first indictment against Trump is about … Stormy Daniels,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Some Democrats – including Rep Adam Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment – have been highly critical of the department of justice for failing to bring any charges against Trump even more than two years after the 6 January attack.

The indictment of Donald Trump has profound implications for the Republican race for the nomination for next year’s presidential election. As Jill Colvin writes for Associated Press, it is likely to force his potential rivals into the awkward position of having to defend him – or risk the wrath of Trump’s support base.

Polls show Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his standing has not faltered, even amid widespread reporting on the expected charges.

But while the sight of Trump’s involvement with the criminal justice system might galvanise his own supporters, and bring in a raft of small dollar donations, the turmoil could threaten Republican standing in the very swing-state suburbs that have abandoned the party in three successive elections, eroding its grip on the White House, Congress and key governorships.

There is little chance a criminal trial will help Trump in a general election, particularly with independents, who have grown tired of his constant chaos. That has provided an opening for alternatives like Ron DeSantis, who are expected to paint themselves as champions of the former president’s policies – but without all his legal baggage.

It should be noted that an indictment, or even a conviction, would not bar Trump from running for president or serving as the Republican nominee.

Several US media outlets are focused this morning on the fact that the indictment of former president Donald Trump comes after decades of investigations into his business dealings by state and federal authorities. As Stephen Collinson put it for CNN:

The move was especially stunning given Trump’s long record of impunity, which has seen him constantly stretch the limits of the law and the conventions of accepted behaviour with his uproarious personal, business and political careers. Suddenly, Trump’s decades of evading accountability will end. The former president will have to start answering for his conduct.

The perception of this extraordinary case will turn on two questions fundamental to the credibility of American justice: Are all citizens – even the most powerful, like former presidents and White House candidates – considered equal under the law? Or is Trump being singled out because of who he is?

Marc Fisher in the Washington Post provided this context, writing:

50 years after federal officials first accused Trump and his father of violating laws that barred racial discrimination in apartment rentals, the former president has been indicted. The indictment in the Daniels case comes amid an Atlanta-area investigation into Trump’s role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, and a special counsel’s federal investigations into Trump’s actions leading up to the 6 January riot at the Capitol, as well as his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Already, Trump’s statements about the Daniels case have followed a pattern he set in 1973, when federal prosecutors accused Trump and his father, Fred, a prominent New York City apartment developer, of turning away Black people who wanted to rent from them. In that case, Trump first denied the allegation, then said he didn’t know his actions were illegal, and then, through his lawyer, accused the government of conducting a bogus “Gestapo-like investigation.”

This time, Trump initially said he’d never had any sexual relationship with Daniels or that, as he told friends privately, Daniels was not his type. Then, he said he didn’t know Daniels had been paid $130,000 to remain silent about their alleged relationship, which he denies existed. And then he said that perhaps he had known about the payment, but that he never ordered his attorney, Michael Cohen, to make it.

Peter Baker last night in the New York Times tried to put into words just how unprecedented the unfolding events are, writing:

So many unthinkable firsts have occurred since Donald Trump was elected to the White House in 2016, so many inviolable lines have been crossed, so many unimaginable events have shocked the world that it is easy to lose sight of just how astonishing this particular moment really is.

For all of the focus on the tawdry details of the case or its novel legal theory or its political impact, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world’s oldest democracy. For more than two centuries, presidents have been held on a pedestal, even the ones swathed in scandal, declared immune from prosecution while in office and, effectively, even afterward.

No longer. That taboo has been broken. A new precedent has been set. Will it tear the country apart, as some feared about putting a former president on trial after Watergate? Will it be seen by many at home and abroad as victor’s justice akin to developing nations where former leaders are imprisoned by their successors? Or will it become a moment of reckoning, a sign that even someone who was once the most powerful person on the planet is not above the law?

The partisan nature of the response to Trump’s indictment can be summed up in two images. An anti-Trump banner was unfurled outside the New York criminal court building shortly after the indictment was announced, while Trump supporters gathered to protest outside Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Michael R Sisak for Associated Press has this account of how events unfolded towards the end of the day yesterday.

He reports that Donald Trump’s indictment was quietly brought to the clerk’s office at the Manhattan criminal courthouse just before closing time on Thursday.

A woman and two men in suits walked in past reporters who have been staking out the office for weeks, then turned a corner and disappeared through a door to a non-public area known as the indictment room.

Sisak states that the vibe in the room shifted, and then around the courthouse, too. The clerk’s office, normally a bustle of lawyers and paralegals seeking case files and submitting papers, people posting bail and court employees cracking jokes, grew quiet and tense.

Moments later, just before 5pm local time, when a reporter asked if there were any filings involving “People v Donald Trump” – her customary end-of-day question in recent days – a usually cheerful clerk sternly replied: “We have no information on that case. The office is closing. You have to leave.”

The reporters, from outlets including the Associated Press legal publication Law360, left the office and stood outside in the hallway, watching through glass doors as workers turned out the lights and the people who’d walked in a few minutes earlier worked in darkness inside filing the indictment.

“After visiting the clerk’s office for weeks, this was all very strange,” said Frank Runyeon, a reporter for Law360. “Very unusual and we knew something was up.”

As the people continued to work, and reporters peered in at what was going on, court officers came to the hallway and shooed the press away. That floor of the courthouse was now closed, they said.

The indictment remains under seal, its contents secret, likely until Trump is arraigned. But news of the indictment, voted on by a grand jury sitting in a court building across the street from the criminal courthouse, broke shortly afterwards.

Republican politicians were also swift to react to the news. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, called the indictment “un-American” and assailed Bragg as a “Soros-backed” Manhattan prosecutor who was “stretching the law to target a political opponent”.

He added that as governor of Florida, where Trump has lived since leaving the White House, he would not oblige an extradition request should Trump refuse to surrender voluntarily.

News networks that lean towards the Republicans were vocal in their criticism of the indictment last night.

Associated Press reports that Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters called it “totally unacceptable and a disgrace to this country”. Fox’s Sean Hannity said “This is repulsive. This is a disgusting political hit job the likes of which we have never seen in this country anymore.”

Commentator Pete Hegseth said “This is a horrible night for the republic, but politically it’s a great night for Donald Trump,” and he predicted that mugshots of the former president would be proudly displayed in college dorm rooms and on T-shirts.

Hugo Lowell

What we know so far …