Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many Republicans in the U.S. Congress have responded to Donald Trump’s looming Tuesday arraignment by characterizing the criminal justice system as corrupt, in accusations that parallel their earlier broadsides against the nation’s elections after the former president’s 2020 defeat.

Trump and his allies in the House of Representatives and Senate have used rhetoric that echoed his false claims of widespread election fraud in the build-up to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Critics warn that the present partisan rhetoric could shake public trust in courts by undermining the institutional legitimacy of the criminal justice system.

“Trump’s indictment is the culmination of 6 years of the Democrats weaponizing law enforcement to target and persecute their political enemies. Dictatorships operate like this – the US is supposed to be different,” tweeted Senator Ted Cruz, a hardline Republican who voted to overturn 2020 election results.

Trump says he is innocent of the expected New York charges – which revolve around hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Details of the charges are as yet unclear.

He says the investigation and three other probes involving his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House are all politically motivated.

Most Democrats have warned against challenging the legitimacy of the institutions of government in defense of Trump, who routinely pushed up against the guard rails of democracy during his four years in the White House and was twice impeached by Congress.

“Political leaders ought to stand up for the American system of government,” said Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who also served on the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6 attack.

“Undercutting the system of government is a serious matter and a threat to our future,” she said in an interview.

Trump has been unrestrained in his rhetoric in recent weeks, calling for protests and warning of potential “death & destruction” if he were to be charged.

He used fiery language hours before his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, in a bid to overturn his election defeat. Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after that riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.

FOCUS ON BRAGG

Most Republicans have trained their invective on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accusing the prosecutor of mounting a politically motivated investigation aimed at preventing Trump from being re-elected to the White House in 2024.

After Trump on March 18 announced that he expected to be arrested in days, the Republican-controlled House launched its own probe of Bragg’s grand jury investigation, seeking documents and testimony. They have called Bragg’s move “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and said the indictment followed years of the office searching for any basis on which to bring charges.

Democrats questioned whether Congress has the authority to investigate a state-level investigation, particularly one conducted under secretive grand jury rules.

Bragg, a Democrat, on Friday warned Republican Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil, who are leading the probe, against attacking the criminal justice system.

“You and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” the Manhattan prosecutor wrote.

House Republicans continued to push back. Firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene said she planned to protest against Trump’s court appearance on Tuesday, while Brian Mast went further and told CNN he would not accept the outcome of a jury trial, saying “I don’t have a trust that a jury will make a fair assessment of this.”

Not all Republicans were so quick to cast doubt on the courts.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson issued a statement that called for patience and underscored the legal principle that Trump, as a defendant, should be presumed innocent.

“We need to wait on the facts and for our American system of justice to work like it does for thousands of Americans every day,” said Hutchinson, who is considering his own 2024 White House run.

Historians including Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer said Republican statements about Bragg and the criminal justice system follow a long-established partisan line.

“The party has invested a great deal in attacking the legitimacy of institutions, which is why Trump fit well into the party and continues to be popular,” Zelizer said in an email.

Nicole Hemmer, director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, warned that Republican attacks on the U.S. criminal justice system could ultimately have dire consequences for courts and juries.

“This is the end-game of the ‘deep state’ rhetoric that Donald Trump has deployed since 2016 to sow those seeds of distrust in institutions of accountability,” Hemmer said.

“We haven’t yet seen a cataclysmic moment in this rejection of the courts. But we are starting to see the steps toward it, as we saw the steps toward Jan. 6 coming from a long way off.”

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Joe Biden was asked on Friday morning about the impact that the indictment of his White House predecessor and political rival Donald Trump would have on America, the U.S. president had an emphatic response: no comment.

“I’m not going to talk about Trump’s indictment,” Biden elaborated after being pressed several times by reporters.

Biden was continuing a strategy his White House has honed on Trump over two years – silence is golden. Now that Trump has been indicted in a New York hush money case, White House officials indicate they plan to follow the same “keep quiet and carry on” playbook.

That plan could be tested in the days ahead, as Republicans rally around Trump, attack the U.S. judicial system, and some, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, make plans for a New York City protest on Tuesday – the day the former president is due in court in Manhattan – that some fear could turn violent.

Biden, a Democrat, won the presidency in 2020 by directly attacking Trump, promising to restore the “soul of America” after his predecessor’s chaotic four years in office. As president, Biden has lambasted the former president’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) allies and policies, but rarely Trump himself.

Democratic strategists said the deliberate silence by Biden and his team made political sense.

“The administration should continue to do what they’ve done all along, focusing on governing and addressing Americans’ concerns,” Democratic strategist Karen Finney said. “This is a moment to reassure Americans by continuing to demonstrate what strong, stable, effective leadership looks like.”

Biden is set to travel on Monday to a manufacturing facility in Minnesota and is expected to be in the White House on Tuesday, when Trump is due to turn himself in to authorities in New York, where a grand jury indicted him.

“They’ve been smart to stay out of it,” Democratic strategist Lis Smith said of the White House strategy on Trump. “In 2020, Joe Biden benefited from voters’ exhaustion with the chaos of the Trump administration. The split screen of President Biden focused on doing his job well versus Trump and the Republican Party in chaos will only help him.”

Trump as president publicly referred to Biden as a criminal and labeled protesters “thugs.” Trump faces other investigations related to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden.

The White House has said it will not comment on Trump because his actions are being investigated by Biden’s own Justice Department, which the president has pledged to leave independent.

That calculation could shift if Trump supporters upset by the criminal charges erupt in violence and once Biden begins an expected re-election campaign and may be forced eventually to confront Trump directly on a debate stage. Trump is seeking to regain the presidency in 2024.

Biden had not yet been inaugurated as president when the Capitol attack occurred. On that day, Biden urged Trump to call off the rioters, asking him on social media to “go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution.”

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Friday about any precautions the federal government may be making, except to say that “we’re always prepared” for the prospect of violence. Jean-Pierre reiterated Biden’s often-stated support for people to “protest peacefully.”

Trump is set to plead not guilty to the charges and has indicated he will not drop out of the race.

Biden views his predecessor as stoking a dangerous movement, and his warnings about “MAGA” extremism are heartfelt, according to two people who have spoken with the president recently.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile noted that Biden has not yet officially declared himself a candidate for the 2024 election and did not need to comment on Trump’s predicament.

“President Biden is not a candidate, and while he may or may not have an opinion, I see no reason for the president to put his hands on the scales of justice of another branch of government,” Brazile said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland; Editing by Will Dunham and Heather Timmons)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many Republicans in the U.S. Congress have responded to Donald Trump’s looming Tuesday arraignment by characterizing the criminal justice system as corrupt, in accusations that parallel their earlier broadsides against the nation’s elections after the former president’s 2020 defeat.

    Trump and his allies in the House of Representatives and Senate have used rhetoric that echoed his false claims of widespread election fraud in the build-up to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

Critics warn that the present partisan rhetoric could shake public trust in courts by undermining the institutional legitimacy of the criminal justice system.

“Trump’s indictment is the culmination of 6 years of the Democrats weaponizing law enforcement to target and persecute their political enemies. Dictatorships operate like this – the US is supposed to be different,” tweeted Senator Ted Cruz, a hardline Republican who voted to overturn 2020 election results.

Trump says he is innocent of the expected New York charges – which revolve around hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Details of the charges are as yet unclear.

He says the investigation and three other probes involving his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House are all politically motivated.

Most Democrats have warned against challenging the legitimacy of the institutions of government in defense of Trump, who routinely pushed up against the guard rails of democracy during his four years in the White House and was twice impeached by Congress.

“Political leaders ought to stand up for the American system of government,” said Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who also served on the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6 attack.

“Undercutting the system of government is a serious matter and a threat to our future,” she said in an interview.

Trump has been unrestrained in his rhetoric in recent weeks, calling for protests and warning of potential “death & destruction” if he were to be charged.

He used fiery language hours before his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, in a bid to overturn his election defeat. Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after that riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.

FOCUS ON BRAGG

Most Republicans have trained their invective on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accusing the prosecutor of mounting a politically motivated investigation aimed at preventing Trump from being re-elected to the White House in 2024.

After Trump on March 18 announced that he expected to be arrested in days, the Republican-controlled House launched its own probe of Bragg’s grand jury investigation, seeking documents and testimony. They have called Bragg’s move “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and said the indictment followed years of the office searching for any basis on which to bring charges.

Democrats questioned whether Congress has the authority to investigate a state-level investigation, particularly one conducted under secretive grand jury rules.

Bragg, a Democrat, on Friday warned Republican Representatives Jim Jordan, James Comer and Bryan Steil, who are leading the probe, against attacking the criminal justice system.

“You and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” the Manhattan prosecutor wrote.

House Republicans continued to push back. Firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene said she planned to protest against Trump’s court appearance on Tuesday, while Brian Mast went further and told CNN he would not accept the outcome of a jury trial, saying “I don’t have a trust that a jury will make a fair assessment of this.”

Not all Republicans were so quick to cast doubt on the courts.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson issued a statement that called for patience and underscored the legal principle that Trump, as a defendant, should be presumed innocent.

“We need to wait on the facts and for our American system of justice to work like it does for thousands of Americans every day,” said Hutchinson, who is considering his own 2024 White House run.

Historians including Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer said Republican statements about Bragg and the criminal justice system follow a long-established partisan line.

“The party has invested a great deal in attacking the legitimacy of institutions, which is why Trump fit well into the party and continues to be popular,” Zelizer said in an email.

Nicole Hemmer, director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, warned that Republican attacks on the U.S. criminal justice system could ultimately have dire consequences for courts and juries.

“This is the end-game of the ‘deep state’ rhetoric that Donald Trump has deployed since 2016 to sow those seeds of distrust in institutions of accountability,” Hemmer said.

“We haven’t yet seen a cataclysmic moment in this rejection of the courts. But we are starting to see the steps toward it, as we saw the steps toward Jan. 6 coming from a long way off.”

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – When Donald Trump walks into Justice Juan Merchan’s courtroom on Tuesday to face criminal charges, it will be a first for a former U.S. president but familiar territory for the veteran judge who serves on Manhattan’s criminal court.

    Merchan last year oversaw a criminal trial of the Trump Organization that ended with the real estate company convicted by a jury of tax fraud and hit with fines, while one of its longtime executives, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and was sent to jail.

Trump is expected to be arraigned before Merchan on Tuesday following a grand jury investigation into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The grand jury has indicted Trump, though the specific charges have not been publicly disclosed.

Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, told Reuters the former president will plead not guilty.

Merchan sentenced the Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million after jurors convicted the company in December. The judge also sentenced Weisselberg, who long served as an executive under Trump but was the prosecution’s star witness in the trial, to five months of incarceration.

On Friday, Trump, who was not charged in his company’s case, lashed out at Merchan on his Truth Social platform.

“The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME,” wrote Trump, who has launched a campaign to regain the presidency in 2024. “He strong armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn’t ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY.”

Merchan did not reply to a request for comment.

The Trump Organization trial is not Merchan’s only recent encounter with people close to the former president. Merchan also is presiding over a criminal case involving former Trump campaign and White House adviser Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, conspiracy and fraud related to a nonprofit that raised funds for building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Merchan has been a Manhattan criminal court judge since 2009 after prior stints on the state’s Court of Claims, which hears cases against the state and its agencies, and family court in the Bronx.

The judge was born in Colombia and moved to the United States at age 6, growing up in New York City’s borough of Queens, according to news reports. Merchan graduated from Baruch College and Hofstra University School of Law and began his legal career in the same District Attorney’s office that is now prosecuting Trump.

Merchan presided over the 2012 case of the so-called “Soccer Mom Madam” Anna Gristina, which garnered lurid headlines in the New York media. Gristina was accused of running a high-end brothel out of her Manhattan apartment and eventually pleaded guilty. Gristina sued Merchan in 2021 to unseal records in her case as part of an effort to vacate her record. Her case was dismissed, according to court records.

In 2011, Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York recommended that President Barack Obama nominate Merchan for a federal judgeship in Brooklyn, saying he would have been the first Colombian-born federal judge, according to the New York Law Journal. Merchan was not nominated for the post.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Will Dunham and Noeleen Walder)

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A social media influencer who once had 58,000 Twitter followers was convicted by a federal jury of election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race over a voter suppression scheme, the Justice Department said late on Friday.

Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted of the charge of conspiracy against rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote, the Justice Department said in a statement. Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

In 2016, Mackey, 33, established an audience on Twitter with 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election in which Republican former President Donald Trump defeated Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mackey, a Trump supporter, had been charged in 2021 by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who said he conspired with others to disseminate disinformation on social media and urged people to cast their ballots through invalid means such as text messages.

In one tweet for example, he had featured a picture of an African American woman standing in front of a sign for an unnamed candidate. Next to the image, it said: “Avoid the line. Vote from home.”

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said.

Mackey’s lawyer, Andrew Frisch, suggested his client would appeal.

“This case presents an unusual array of appellate issues that are exceptionally strong,” Frisch was quoted as saying by the New York Times, adding: “I’m confident about the way forward.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, Vaughn has in the past openly supported hate groups.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman has been discharged from hospital where he was treated for weeks for depression, his office said on Friday, adding he will return to the Senate mid-April.

Fetterman’s depression is now in remission, his office said, citing a doctor.

The return of Fetterman, who flipped a Republican-held seat in last November’s midterm elections, will be good news for Democrats, who hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward in Washington)

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By Ross Kerber

(Reuters) -Republican attorneys general from 21 U.S. states raised fresh concerns with asset managers over their consideration for environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in the votes cast at U.S. corporate annual meetings getting under way this spring.

The top state legal officers issued their challenge via a letter, provided by the office of Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen on Friday, sent to 53 of the largest U.S. fund firms including BlackRock Inc and the asset-management arms of State Street Corp and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The letter marks the latest salvo in a growing political battle over what had been a quiet corner of finance.

Companies and investors increasingly consider factors like climate change and workforce diversity, which they say can affect company performance and reputation. The approach has received backing from Democratic leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who recently used his first veto to defend a rule on ESG investing.

Meanwhile, Republicans, many from energy-producing states, have raised a growing chorus of challenges on ESG. The latest letter built on concerns many of the same attorneys general brought to BlackRock last August.

In the new letter, dated March 30, the attorneys general told the asset managers that “many of you have committed to take actions inconsistent with your clients’ financial interests,” such as by joining groups like the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, which encourages members to help reduce global emissions.

This can be a problem for fund participants who do not share ESG goals, the Republicans wrote. “As far as we can tell, your non-ESG funds do not disclose to investors that their investments will be used to further ESG goals, including pressuring companies to reduce emissions in economically destructive ways,” the letter states.

Asset managers have argued that such memberships align with their fiduciary obligations, and some are giving clients more control over proxy votes.

BlackRock and State Street did not comment. JPMorgan declined to comment.

Another section of the Republicans’ letter describes several pending shareholder resolutions as “pushing three companies to stop using Vanguard” as their default retirement plan and noting Vanguard’s fossil fuel investments.

“Asset managers voting for the exclusion of one of their competitors has clear antitrust implications,” the letter states.

A representative for Knudsen said Pennsylvania-based Vanguard, the top U.S. mutual fund manager, was not among the recipients of the letter, because it had withdrawn from the Net Zero group, the rare fund manager to do so.

Vanguard did not comment.

The resolutions were filed by activist shareholder group As You Sow, which the Republicans suggested had targeted Vanguard over its withdrawal. As You Sow President Danielle Fugere said that was not correct as the group had filed similar resolutions last year, before Vanguard’s December action.

Fugere also said the letter mischaracterizes the resolutions, since they only ask for companies to issue reports on how they are protecting plan beneficiaries with long-term investment horizons from climate risk.

The attorney general’s letter, Fugere said, “seems geared to chill asset manager votes.”

(Reporting by Ross Kerber. Additional reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Richard Chang)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman has been discharged from hospital where he was treated for weeks for depression, his office said on Friday, adding he will return to the Senate mid-April.

Fetterman’s depression is now in remission, his office said in a statement, citing a doctor.

The return of Fetterman, who flipped a Republican-held seat in last November’s midterm elections, will be good news for Democrats, who hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Fetterman had checked into a Washington-area hospital for treatment for clinical depression in mid-February. He had also suffered a near-fatal stroke months before his election win.

When Fetterman was admitted for clinical depression in mid-February, he had severe symptoms of depression with low energy and motivation, minimal speech, poor sleep, slowed thinking, slowed movement, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, but no suicidal ideation, the doctor cited in the statement issued by Fetterman’s office said.

Over the preceding eight weeks, his symptoms worsened and Fetterman stopped eating and taking fluids, causing him to develop low blood pressure, the doctor, David Williamson, said.

During the course of his treatment, his condition improved as his sleep was restored and he began eating well, the doctor said, adding Fetterman was also identified with mild to moderate hearing loss and was fitted with hearing aids.

Known for his large tattooed frame, goatee and penchant for hoodies and shorts, Fetterman gained a national profile for his progressive positions. The former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor beat Republican celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz by a large margin in November’s elections to replace former Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who retired.

Fetterman, who suffered a stroke last May and later acknowledged he had “almost died,” has faced challenges adjusting to life in the Senate during his recovery.

Since the stroke, he has suffered lingering problems with his ability to speak and process the speech he hears.

During the course of Fetterman’s depression treatment, his speech abilities also improved as he worked with speech-language specialists, his office said on Friday.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers reintroduced a bill to allow news organizations to join together to negotiate ad rates with tech giants such as Alphabet Inc’s Google.

The measure would allow news broadcasters and publishers with fewer than 1,500 full-time workers to jointly negotiate ad rates — many of which face financial struggles. One of the biggest of the companies placing online ads for advertisers is Google.

News organizations have complained for years they are not sufficiently compensated for readers that their content attracts.

The bill was also introduced in the last Congress but failed to become law.

The bill was introduced by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, along with Senator John Kennedy, a Republican.

The News/Media Alliance, a media trade association, praised the bill it says will protect and sustain local journalism. “Emerging technologies such as AI are making it even more clear the need for compensation when content creators may soon see even less return than what they receive today,” the group said.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the proposal.

Previously, Google said that its ad revenue and licensing fees provides needed revenue to news organizations, and that its search engine sends readers to publishers’ websites billions of times per month.

While in December, Facebook parent Meta Platforms threatened to remove news if Congress had approved the journalism competition measure.

Other co-sponsors include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse, Joe Manchin and Cory Booker along with Republican Senators Steve Daines, Bill Cassidy, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Cynthia Lummis, and Roger Wicker.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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By Karen Freifeld, Luc Cohen and Tyler Clifford

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump is due to be fingerprinted and photographed in a New York courthouse next week as he becomes the first ex-president to face criminal charges, in a case involving a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s expected appearance before a judge in Manhattan on Tuesday as the Republican mounts a comeback bid for the presidency could further inflame divisions across the country.

A New York judge on Friday authorized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to make the charges public, but it was not clear when he would do so.

For nearly two weeks, Trump has been using the legal threats he confronts to raise money and rally supporters as he seeks his party’s nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden next year.

The first U.S. president to try to overthrow an election defeat, inspiring the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, has signaled he will continue to campaign even as he faces charges.

“I am not afraid of what’s to come,” he said in a fundraising email on Friday.

The specific charges are not yet known, though CNN reported that Trump faced more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, told Reuters the former president will plead not guilty.

Another Trump lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said Trump will not have to wear handcuffs at his court appearance and will likely be released without having to post bail.

“He’s ready to fight. He’s gearing up,” Tacopina told Reuters in a phone interview.

Trump, 76, said on Thursday that he was “completely innocent” and accused Bragg, a Democrat, of trying to damage his electoral chances.

PARTISAN BRAWL

Trump’s claims of political interference have been echoed by many of his fellow Republicans and his potential rivals in the 2024 race.

Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, said the charges send a “terrible message” to the world about U.S. justice.

“I’m very troubled by it,” Pence, a possible 2024 candidate, said at a forum in Washington.

Senior Republicans in the House of Representatives have vowed to investigate Bragg and demanded he hand over documents and other confidential material from the investigation.

Bragg said on Friday that Congress does not have authority to interfere with a New York legal proceeding and accused the lawmakers of escalating political tensions. Bragg’s office has been the target of bomb threats in recent weeks.

“You and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” Bragg wrote in a letter to Republican lawmakers.

Biden declined to comment on Friday as he left the White House for a trip to storm-ravaged Mississippi.

Trump alleges there are political motivations behind all four criminal investigations he is known to face – including federal probes into his retention of classified documents and attempts to overturn his election defeat, and a separate Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn his loss in that state.

He has also accused Bragg, who is Black, of racial bias.

SECURITY HIGH

Officials have stepped up security around the courthouse since Trump on March 18 called on his supporters to protest any arrest. A law enforcement source said police would close streets around the courthouse ahead of Tuesday’s expected appearance.

On Friday, media outlets were set up outside the courthouse but there was no sign of unrest or protests related to the case.

The Manhattan charges will likely be unsealed by a judge in the coming days and Trump will have to travel there to be photographed, fingerprinted and appear in court, which is expected on Tuesday. Necheles, the Trump lawyer, said she did not expect charges to be unsealed until that day.

Any potential trial is still at least more than a year away, legal experts said, meaning it could occur during or after the presidential campaign.

Trump appealed earlier this month for nationwide protests, recalling his charged rhetoric ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, and warned last week of potential “death & destruction” if he were charged.

“It’s politics. I think they’re just dying to find a way to keep him from being eligible for running for reelection,” Mark Funk, 58, said at a beer garden in Houston.

Some 44% of Republicans said Trump should drop out of the race if he is indicted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week.

HAS ESCAPED LEGAL PERIL BEFORE

Trump has escaped legal peril numerous times since the 1970s, when he joined his family’s real estate business.

In the White House, he weathered two attempts by Congress to remove him from office and a probe into his campaign’s contacts with Russia in 2016.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office prosecuted Trump’s business on tax-fraud charges last year, leading to a $1.61 million criminal penalty, but Trump himself was not charged.

The presiding judge in that case, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, is expected to oversee the Daniels case as well, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Though it is unclear what specific charges Trump will face, some legal experts have said Bragg might have to rely on untested legal theories to argue that Trump falsified business records to cover up other crimes, such as violating federal campaign-finance law.

Ahead of the indictment, the grand jury heard months of evidence about an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 campaign.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

The former president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has said he coordinated with Trump on the payments to Daniels and to a second woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also said she had a sexual relationship with him.

Trump has denied having affairs with either woman and initially disputed knowing anything about the payments. He later acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for what he called a “simple private transaction.”

Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign-finance violation in 2018 and served more than a year in prison. Federal prosecutors said he acted at Trump’s direction.

(This story has been refiled to add the dropped word ‘said’ in paragraph 25)

(Additional reporting by Tim Reid, Doina Chiacu and Katharine Jackson; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)

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