NEW YORK: A New York grand panel has voted to charge former US President Donald Trump over hush money payments, western media reported Thursday, making Trump the first ever former or serving president to face criminal charges.
The New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office will likely announce its decision in the upcoming days. Earlier, the former US President had said that he is likely to be arrested over the matter. In forecasting his indictment, Donald Trump had also issued a call for protest demonstrations and dim threats warnings that this could lead to “potential destruction” that “could be disastrous for the country.
US President
Donald Trump made no immediate comment on his Social media platform after the grand jury’s reported decision to indict him, however, his son Eric criticized it as the “cunning targeting of a political rival.”
Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress in 2019 that he had made the payment on Trump’s behalf and was later refunded. However, prosecutors said the checks were not properly listed, and the panel was asked to consider if the suspicious accounting was part of a cover-up, intended to help Trump’s election drive by burying the outrage.
The New York inquiry is the first to reach a verdict on charges out of three major investigations into the former US president. Donald Trump also faces felony inquiries in Georgia linking to the 2020 polls and in Washington over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, who hoped to keep him in the White House following his election loss to President Joe Biden.
Donald Trump, who is seen to be the frontrunner to be the Republican candidate in the 2024 polls, has branded all of the inquiries “witch hunts” and political pursuits.
