NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, in the indictment handed down by a Manhattan grand jury, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
He will be formally arrested and arraigned Tuesday in his hush money case, setting the scene for the historic, shocking moment when a former president is forced to stand before a judge to hear the criminal charges against him.
Trump will face 34 counts of business fraud after a grand jury voted to indict him over an alleged hush money payment to a porn star, his lawyer Joe Tacopina has said.
“We now heard 34 counts, and I guarantee you it’s going to be 34 counts when we find out next week,” Tacopina told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Trump, who will become the first former president of the United States to be charged with a crime, is accused of falsifying business records after $130,000 was paid to Stormy Daniels.
She said the money was to buy her silence about a sexual encounter with Trump at a hotel in Lake Tahoe in 2006. Trump has repeatedly denied the encounter took place.
“They’ll take each check and make that a count, perhaps, and that’s how they’ll do it because the checks are paid to Cohen,” he explained.
‘Witch-hunt’
Trump compared his criminal indictment to a “witch-hunt” as he warned that it would “backfire massively” on President Joe Biden.
He said was a victim of “political persecution” and that Democrats were “trying to impact an election”.
“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 said.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, has been investigating Trump for potential violations of campaign finance law.
According to CNN, Trump was charged with more than 30 counts relating to business fraud.