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The Manhattan, New York, grand jury hearing evidence in the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump has been called off for Wednesday.
The case involved Trump’s alleged role in hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, allegedly to keep Daniels quiet about an affair the two of them had in 2006.
“The reason for the adjournment wasn’t immediately clear. The grand jury typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, one of the people familiar with the matter said, and it heard from witnesses earlier this week,” Politico reported.
“The grand jury has been told to stay home today. They’re on standby for tomorrow,” one senior law-enforcement official said.
“The D.A.’s office didn’t tell the court why the day off, [they] just said, ‘I don’t want them today, maybe tomorrow,'” the official added.
A law enforcement source told Fox News Monday that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement discussed extra police and barriers as well as the logistics of closing down streets.
District Attorney Bragg is also reportedly against allowing for a “virtual arraignment” of Trump, which means he would have to appear in New York.
“The source said law enforcement does not expect the former president to be arraigned until next week as the Manhattan grand jury – which has been meeting secretly to hear evidence for weeks – has another witness on Wednesday. A virtual option was apparently ruled out as the DA is opposed to it. However, another source familiar with the discussions regarding the handling of a possible Trump indictment, said that a virtual arraignment for the former president was never seriously considered,” Fox News reported.
“The grand jury has been probing Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment made in 2016 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about a sexual encounter she said she had with him years earlier. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a shell company before being reimbursed by Trump, whose company, the Trump Organization, logged the reimbursements as legal expenses,” Fox News added.
The indictment has triggered outrage from many given federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office for the Southern District of New York chose not to charge Trump in 2019 related to the payment to Daniels.
The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.
The DA’s reported decision also comes as Trump is running for president in 2024, which has led to some arguing that the investigation and charges are politically motivated.
A lawyer for Donald Trump described the most likely scenario at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate should he be indicted this week by a Manhattan grand jury.
The attorney stated earlier this week that Trump would not resist and would surrender to authorities in the event of an indictment in Bragg’s investigation into the alleged hush-money agreement.
Former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy also slammed NY DA Bragg’s “hypocritical” decision not to prosecute certain crimes amid his current case against Trump.
“On his first day in office, New York’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced all the crimes he would not prosecute. The person elected as the top law enforcement official had a long list of laws he didn’t respect enough to follow. He substituted his politics for the rule of law because that is what so-called progressive prosecutors do. There was nary a word of decent on the left. Felonies would be downgraded, serious cases dismissed or pled down, and prison terms would rarely be solved,” Gowdy began.
“Alvin Bragg was a social engineer masquerading as a prosecutor. To some on the left, showing a photo ID to vote is anti-democratic, but apparently not a prosecutor who ignores the law. And yet, we have finally stumbled upon the one crime worth the full weight of Alvin Bragg’s office. Forget about guns and robbery and acts of violence. What really gets his attention is paying someone to be quiet about sex. To be clear, Alvin Bragg will not prosecute people who pay for sex — that is one the crimes he promised to ignore. To him, you can pay someone for sex in New York and get away with it, but God forbid you pay someone to be quiet about it afterward,” he added.
