NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — Former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury Thursday on charges brought by a George Soros-backed district attorney. The news follows hard on the heels of a report that the grand jury was slated to take a month-long break, potentially pushing back the indictment.
In a defiant statement, Trump said the indictment was part of a “Witch-Hunt” and represented “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
He suggested the move would “backfire massively on Joe Biden” and said his “Movement and our Party” will “throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”.
The Manhattan grand jury voted to indict the embattled former president in connection to alleged hush money payments made to pornography “actress” Stephanie Clifford, known as “Stormy Daniels,” during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen gave Clifford $130,000 during the campaign to keep quiet about an affair she and Trump allegedly had a decade prior. Trump has denied that the affair ever took place, and even Clifford said in 2018 that the affair had never occurred, though she later doubled back again. Though now accusing Trump of orchestrating the payoff, Cohen previously said Trump didn’t reimburse him for the payment to Clifford, according to a 2018 letter obtained by The Daily Mail.
While the specific charges against Trump have not yet been publicly revealed, it’s been suggested that they pertain to allegations that Trump improperly claimed the payoff to Clifford as a legal expense.
Despite the thin evidence, District Attorney Alvin Bragg has reportedly been attempting to prosecute Trump by utilizing an unprecedented legal theory that would turn a potential misdemeanor for falsification of business records into a felony campaign finance violation.
Bragg previously boasted about filing over a hundred lawsuits against Trump while serving in the New York Attorney General’s office, and reportedly received $1 million in campaign contributions from the Color of Change PAC, a leftist advocacy group funded by prominent left-wing mega donor George Soros.
The indictment is unconnected to previous Democrat allegations concerning Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, his alleged possession of classified documents, or his alleged incitement of violence on January 6, 2021.
Trump is the first former U.S. president to be indicted on criminal charges.
The unprecedented news comes after Trump announced his imminent arrest in a two-part Truth Social post on March 18, in which he decried the state of the nation and called on supporters to protest.
Trump said his then-impending indictment was politically-motivated and proves that the United States under the leadership of radical leftists has become like a third-world country.
Comment: TRUE!
READ: Former President Donald Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday
The full effects of his March 30 indictment remain to be seen. The sealed indictment is expected to be unsealed in the upcoming days.
Following Trump’s announcement, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, penned a letter to Bragg demanding answers regarding what he termed an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” arguing the charges were only being brought against Trump in what is now an old case solely because of his presidential candidacy.
According to Jordan, the available facts suggest that Bragg’s prosecution of Trump is “motivated by political calculations,” thus requiring “congressional scrutiny.”
The Manhattan DA’s office hit back at Jordan over the letter, declaring it wouldn’t be “intimidated by efforts to undermine the justice process.”
Jordan’s letter came after GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called Trump’s then-impending indictment “an outrageous abuse of power,” going on to blast Bragg as “a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.”
McCarthy also promised to stand up congressional committees to investigate whether federal dollars were used to “subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”
This is far from the first time Trump has received unprecedented treatment at the hands of political adversaries.
After political opponents spied on Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, Democrat lawmakers brought articles of impeachment against Trump twice during his presidency, once over an alleged abuse of power in asking Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy to investigate the overseas business dealings of Joe Biden and his family in 2019, and a second time in 2021 for allegedly inciting an insurrection on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol. Trump was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in both instances.
In the aftermath of the January 6 riot, Trump was also universally banned from myriad social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The censorship ultimately pushed Trump to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social.
Last year, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, was raided by the FBI seeking allegedly mishandled classified documents. Trump has stated that the documents in question had already been declassified, and that he had been fully cooperating with the FBI in the lead-up to the raid.
READ: ‘Pure politics’: Former DOJ official says FBI raid part of ‘plan’ to keep Trump out of White House
Though predictions concerning Trump’s indictment have triggered backlash from Republicans, who argue the prosecution is as an unprecedented abuse of power, some observers predict that it will actually serve to bolster his presidential ambitions in the long run, since the arrest seemingly contributes to ongoing evidence that Trump poses an existential threat to the “Deep State” actors who have long sought to put an end to his influence.
New Twitter CEO and free speech advocate Elon Musk, whose new policies for the social media platform led to the restoration of Trump’s Twitter account last year, opined shortly after Trump announced he expected to be arrested that the action against Trump would ultimately lead to his being “re-elected in a landslide victory.”
On Thursday, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would not assist in the extradition of Trump from his Florida home to New York for his arraignment.
This is a developing story.
