A New York grand jury has indicted former US President Donald Trump over hush money payments made to a porn star during his 2016 campaign, making him the first former US president to face criminal charges.
The historic indictment of the 76-year-old Republican – who denies all wrongdoing in connection with the payments made ahead of the election that sent him to the White House – is certain to upend the current presidential race in which Trump hopes to regain office.
For weeks, the jury has been hearing evidence about a payment made to buy the silence of a porn star called Stormy Daniels. It happened before Trump was president, just before the 2016 election which he won against Hillary Clinton.
The public will find out exactly what the charges are next Tuesday, when Trump will be arrested and appear before a judge in Manhattan.
And it will forever mark the legacy of the former leader, who survived two impeachments and kept prosecutors at bay over everything from the US Capitol riot to missing classified files – only to land in court over a sex scandal.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office confirmed that it had contacted Trump's lawyers to "coordinate his surrender" for arraignment in New York – with the felony charges against him to be revealed at that point.
Trump slammed the indictment as "political persecution and election interference", raging against prosecutors and his Democratic opponents and vowing that it would backfire on his successor, President Joe Biden.
In the Republican camp, Trump's allies and sons denounced what they see as a vendetta aimed at derailing his 2024 campaign – while his expected challenger for the party nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, slammed the indictment as "un-American."
Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, said the indictment had "irreparably damaged" the country.
But the top Democrat Adam Schiff – lead prosecutor of Trump's first impeachment in 2019 — called it "a sobering and unprecedented development."
"The indictment and arrest of a former president is unique throughout all of American history," Schiff said in a statement. "But so too is the unlawful conduct for which Trump has been charged."
An attorney for Daniels welcomed the news as proof that "no one is above the law."
On March 18, Trump had declared he expected to be arrested within days over the payment to Daniels – who received USD 130,000 weeks before the election that brought Trump to power, to stop her from going public about a tryst she claims they had a decade earlier.
Trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who has testified before the grand jury, told Congress in 2019 that he made the payment to Daniels on Trump's behalf and was later reimbursed.
Prosecutors argued the checks were not properly registered, and the jury was asked to consider if there had been a cover-up, intended to benefit Trump's campaign by burying the scandal.
The New York investigation is the first to reach a decision on charges out of three major probes into the former president.
Trump also faces felony investigations in Georgia relating to the 2020 election and in Washington over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by the ex-president's supporters, who hoped to keep him in office after his election loss to Joe Biden.
Trump recently staged his first presidential campaign rally in Waco, Texas on Saturday, addressing several thousand supporters – far fewer than the 15,000 he had expected.