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Trump Responds to Manhattan Grand Jury Indictment

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Earlier on Thursday, we reported that the grand jury in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump over the hush money paid after an alleged affair with Stormy Daniels had unexpectedly come back with an indictment. It was unexpected because, as my colleague Bonchie wrote, “[i]n the weeks prior, the situation had appeared to deteriorate for District Attorney Alvin Bragg. On Wednesday, it was announced that the grand jury was being sent home for a month.”

But on Thursday, they voted to hand down the indictment, as the New York Times wrote:

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

The felony indictment, filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will likely be announced in the coming days.

Now, Trump has reacted to the news, The Hill reports:

Former President Trump lashed out on Thursday after he was indicted in an alleged hush money scheme, maintaining his innocence and accusing Democrats and law enforcement officials of “weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent.”

“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” Trump said in a statement. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

His statement continued:

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” he added.

As expected, the former president pointed at both DA Alvin Bragg and President Joe Biden as being responsible for the investigation that led to Thursday’s felony indictment against him:

Trump sought to case the indictment as a political asset, claiming that the charges would “backfire massively” on both President Biden and Alvin Bragg (D), the Manhattan district attorney whose office is behind the investigation into Trump’s conduct.

“The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it,” Trump said. “So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat [President] Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Since this is the first time a former or current president has been indicted in a criminal case, The Hill notes, “it’s unclear how the matter will play out on the campaign trail.” There are varied opinions on whether this will favor or hinder Trump’s fortunes in 2024. We’ll keep you posted.

Editor’s Note: If they can come for a former president actively campaigning to take back the White House, they can come for us, and they can come for you.

Support us in our mission as we tell the truth about President Trump. Join RedState VIP and use promo code WITCHHUNT to get 50% off of your membership.

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Manhattan Grand Jury Targeting Trump Just Imploded With News of a Long Hiatus

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Is Donald Trump still going to be indicted? Until recently, all information pointed toward the affirmative, but new information coming out of the Manhattan grand jury targeting the former president is painting a different picture.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has been pursuing Trump via a never-before-tested legal theory, resurrecting a years-old investigation that had formerly been shuttered multiple times. The case involves a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels nearly two decades prior. The grand jury is weighing whether Trump broke New York record-keeping laws by not classifying the payment as a campaign expense. Bragg is also trying to upgrade what would be a misdemeanor to a felony, bypassing the statute of limitations.

In other words, the entire ordeal is a farce, and perhaps the grand jury and prosecutors are coming to terms with that. According to a brand new report, the grand jury is now going on a month-long hiatus (Washington Examiner)

The Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump for an alleged hush money payment made in 2016 is reportedly going on a monthlong hiatus.

The grand jury is going on a previously planned one-month hiatus, per Politico, which would push the earliest date for Trump to be indicted to late April.

The report suggests Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is responsible for reconvening the grand jury during planned breaks if he wants them to meet earlier.

The cope from Politico, who originally reported this, is that it was “pre-planned.” But understand that the DA is in control of when the grand jury convenes, and he can force them to come together at any time. If they were close to an indictment, there is zero chance he’d send the grand jury home for a month.

That likely means that the grand jury does not favor an indictment at this point, leaving Bragg to scramble to bolster his case over the next month’s break. There’s little reason to believe, though, that the facts in this case will change substantially enough to affect the current trajectory. Things aren’t looking good for the Democrat fever dream.

Oddly enough, I’m not sure whether this helps or hurts Trump politically. There has very much been a “rally around the persecuted” effect in the 2024 Republican primary since news of an indictment dropped. But if Trump is no longer in legal danger, then the conversation could return to policy and personality, making things more competitive again. Whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be an interesting ride.

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House GOP Takes Apart Alvin Bragg and His Faulty Effort to Target Trump

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Members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees are blasting Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for refusing to cooperate with their requests for documents and testimony regarding his targeting of President Donald Trump.

Bragg refused to cooperate claiming that they were trying to interfere in a local investigation and he even had staff hang up on them, showing how political he can truly be.

But as House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) explained to CNN’s Jake Tapper this morning, it’s Bragg who is stepping over the line and outside his purview trying to investigate an alleged federal election crime that “has no business being litigated in a local district attorney’s office.” As we’ve noted in the past, both the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission decided not to take any action on the matter.

Yet suddenly, when Donald Trump is a declared candidate for president in 2024, you have Alvin Bragg trying to shoehorn in a case that’s essentially a federal case into his jurisdiction. It doesn’t work. Comer said he didn’t have the luxury of refusing to cooperate. Comer called it a “political stunt,” and said he believed that the statute of limitations had run on the matter. He said he didn’t believe the Manhattan DA would be doing it if Donald Trump wasn’t running for president, and the House GOP wanted to ask him if this is the reason he was doing it.

The House GOP ripped apart Bragg in a letter signed by the Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, trouncing Bragg for his refusal. This paragraph is gold and it just dissects the heart of the matter.

Notably, your reply letter did not dispute the central allegations at issue—that you, under political pressure from left-wing activists and former prosecutors in your office, are reportedly planning to use an alleged federal campaign finance violation, previously declined by federal prosecutors, as a vehicle to extend the statute of limitations on an otherwise misdemeanor offense and indict for the first time in history a former President of the United States. Moreover, you are apparently attempting to upgrade a misdemeanor charge to a felony using an untested legal theory at the same time when you are simultaneously downgrading felony charges to misdemeanors in a majority of other cases in your jurisdiction.

In addition to noting the erroneous effort to shoehorn an alleged federal crime into a state prosecution, they also noted it had been rejected by the funds and that they had some federal oversight capacity to look into how federal funds were being expended and limited funds were being prioritized.

Even with downgrading more than half of your felony cases to misdemeanors, your office’s conviction rate when prosecuting serious felony charges was reported to be just 51 percent. Your misdemeanor conviction rate dropped sharply— from 53 percent to 28 percent. Your policies have allowed career “criminals [to] run[ ] the streets” of Manhattan13—creating such a danger that a judge in your district has taken notice.

Yet Bragg wants to go after Trump and upgrade his case?

The GOP chairs pointed out how going down the road that the Manhattan DA seems to want to go could have a “profound impact on how Presidents choose to exercise their powers while in office,” noting that a President “could choose to avoid taking action he believes to be in the national interest because it would negatively impact New York City for fear that he would be subject to a retaliatory prosecution in New York City.”

As a result, they said they now had to consider legislation that would “protect former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials.”

The GOP is right on target with this one. There’s no other reason that one can come to for why this turkey of a case has been pulled back up out of the pit than to go after a political opponent who is running for President. That puts us in a very bad place if this is allowed. Of course, Bragg doesn’t want to comply, because he doesn’t want to answer any questions about how this all came about and if anyone is pulling the strings on this behind the scenes since he didn’t want to proceed with the case, to begin with. He probably doesn’t want to answer the question if there was anyone who pushed him down this road.

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Trump Grand Jury Proceedings Just Took Another Turn That Raises More Questions

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Is Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg getting cold feet now that even more has come out on what a turkey his case against President Donald Trump is? He’s come under a lot of fire for appearing to politically target Trump with the action. Republicans of all stripes, even Never Trump folks, have come out and condemned the action as political and pointed out the dangers of such a political action to the sanctity of the rule of law.

As we reported, the grand jury proceedings were delayed on Wednesday amid reports of another witness, “dissension” in the ranks at the DA’s office as well as sources leaking that Bragg was having trouble convincing the grand jury because of the “weakness” of the case. As I wrote, you know what a big problem that is when a prosecutor can usually “indict a ham sandwich,” particularly in very liberal New York. Sources told Fox there was still a very real possibility that Bragg might decide not to go through with an indictment of Trump.

As I reported on Monday, witness Robert Costello said he thought that he’d gotten through to some of the members of the grand jury when he was telling them that Michael Cohen was not a reliable witness, but was a serial liar.

Now the word is the grand jury will also not be meeting today (Thursday) on the case, a source has confirmed to Fox News.

Since they don’t meet on Friday, that means that they won’t be making any kind of a decision on the matter until at least next week.

The grand jury will be meeting on other matters not related to this case.

This further delay adds to the sense that this case is in trouble and that the jury may not be buying what Bragg is trying to sell, as the Fox report suggested.

As we’ve previously reported, even Bragg himself didn’t want to pursue the matter when he took over as district attorney in January 2022 and suspended the pursuit of the case “indefinitely.” Federal prosecutors also decided not to pursue the matter and the Federal Election Commission decided not to take any action as well. The case has been called out as “legally pathetic” by George Washinton Law professor Jonathan Turley and “nakedly political” by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy. McCarthy, I think it’s safe to say, is no fan of Trump, yet he isn’t afraid to call out what this is.

So that raises the question of why, then, did Bragg pick it back up again as we approach the 2024 presidential race with Trump now a declared candidate in the race? It’s hard not to believe that there’s political targeting going on. House Republicans are now looking into the matter and the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called it an “abuse of power” and is investigating whether Bragg used any federal funds in his effort.

Looks like they’re having some difficulty indicting that “ham sandwich.” Will we see an indictment next week? One has to wonder, but Bragg would likely be better to pack it in at this point before he embarrasses himself any further.

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Bombshell 2018 Letter Delivers a Gut Punch to Manhattan DA’s Case Against Trump

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How much is Michael Cohen’s testimony worth at this point?

I wrote about how his former legal adviser Robert Costello told the grand jury considering the case against President Donald Trump that Cohen was a serial liar, “far from solid evidence,” and that Cohen had told him that he never told Trump about the payment to Stormy Daniels, the crux of the case against President Donald Trump.

Now there’s more evidence that has newly surfaced that also throws a gut punch into the DA’s case.

In a 2018 letter that Michael Cohen’s then-lawyer wrote to the Federal Election Commission, Cohen said that he “used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,” aka Stormy Daniels, in 2016. That also matches what Cohen told Costello.

“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly,” Cohen lawyer Stephen Ryan said in the Feb. 2018 letter.

Mr. Cohen has not been a government employee during any of the relevant time period. The payment in question does not constitute a campaign contribution or expenditure and, therefore, the FEC lacks jurisdiction over this matter. The complainants have not and cannot present any evidence to the contrary. Accordingly, the complaint should be dismissed.’

The letter contradicts what Cohen said later after he flipped on Trump to try to stay out of jail and presumably it also contradicts what he said to the grand jury.

It adds more to the weight of the things adding up and causing the case to crumble around the Manhattan DA. We saw Alvin Bragg postpone the grand jury proceedings for Wednesday, with sources indicating that the grand jury might be questioning the case against Trump and that there was dissension in the ranks of the DA’s office over the case.

President Donald Trump has responded to the bombshell letter calling the letter “exculpatory.” It looks like Trump has a better sense of what can be exculpatory than does a Biden judicial nominee who doesn’t even seem to understand what the Brady case refers to — the requirement of the prosecution to turn over to the defense any exculpatory evidence that they may have.

Other legal experts also said this was likely to help Trump’s case.

Former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman said the 2018 letter could help Trump’s defense if he’s prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over the Daniels payment.

“I think it’s just going to open the door to additional questions of his credibility and give more opportunity for further cross-examination — as though they didn’t have enough,” Rendelman said.

Former Manhattan prosecutor Michael Bachner also said Cohen could prove problematic because he “may or may not be telling the absolute truth about what occurred.”

“Whenever you have as a significant or star witness in your case — an individual who has an enormous amount of baggage, including having made false statements in the past — that is a very serious problem,” Bachner said.

Exactly. It shows one more instance of Cohen not telling the truth and that undermines the case even more. No wonder Bragg is having trouble in the case. I wonder if the grand jury has seen this letter.

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