Trump news live: Manhattan DA says Trump sparked ‘false’ indictment expectation as grand jury skips hearing

An interview with then-President Donald Trump recorded in 2018 appears to undermine his defence in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

“They weren’t taken out of campaign finance – that’s a big thing,” Mr Trump said at the time of the money paid to the porn actor for her to remain silent about an affair she claims they had in 2006.

The $130,000 payment was made by then-Trump fixer Michael Cohen in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Cohen later spent time behind bars as a result of the payment.

“They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me,” Mr Trump said in 2018 during the interview at the White House.

Cohen was reimbursed for the funds, which was logged as a legal fee in the Trump business records.

The Manhattan District Attorney is now investigating if Mr Trump falsified business records.

Lawyer Ron Filipkowski shared the clip on Twitter.

“Seems like Trump’s story has changed since 2018 when he was asked about the payments in the Stormy case,” he said.

“At the time of this interview, he was only worried about federal campaign finance violations. He thought he was in the clear with state law. So back then he emphasized he reimbursed with his money, not campaign money. Problem is that doesn’t work now,” he added.

The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote: “Well, here’s Donald Trump saying he used his personal money for the Stormy Daniels payment, which kept it off his campaign finance reports. He may regret this interview now.”

Mr Giuliani complicated Donald Trump’s defence in May 2018 when he appeared on Fox News admitting that Mr Trump was aware of the payments to women who claimed that they had had affairs with him.

He said at the time that Mr Trump “did know the general arrangement” and that his attorney and fixer Michael Cohen was reimbursed for paying off Stormy Daniels with funds being “funnelled” through a law firm.

Mr Cohen is now one of his former boss’s staunchest critics.

Mr Trump rejected this notion at the time, saying that Mr Giuliani “started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight”.

Lawyer Ron Filipkowski shared the clip of Mr Giuliani from 2018 on Thursday.

The Manhattan grand jury has been meeting since January, but Mr Trump’s announcement on 18 March has put its actions under a microscope in anticipation of an indictment.

New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg called off the grand jury on 22 March, and the jury will not hear the highly scrutinised case on 23 March, pushing any potential indictments until next week at the earliest.

There are a number of reasons why a grand jury hearing for a specific case would be delayed, canceled or rescheduled, including scheduling conflicts, illness and other court matters, as well as other cases that the grand juries are considering.

That’s not uncommon. Grand juries can typically hear multiple cases at a time. Prosecutors in New York are reviewing hundreds of cases. So the grand jury in Mr Trump’s case is likely not the only one on its agenda.

In a letter responding to the Republican chairs of the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Administration committees, the general counsel for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office says that “if charges are brought at the conclusion” of the investigation into former President Donald Trump, “it will be because the rule of law and faithful execution of the District Attorney’s duty require it”.

Manhattan District Attorney’s office general counsel Leslie Dubeck called the letter sent by the chairmen on 20 March “an unprecedent inquiry into a pending local prosecution”.

“The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry,” she added.

The chairmen wrote in their letter that the DA’s investigation into Mr Trump was an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” demanding documents and an interview with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

The grand jury case concerns hush money payments made to women who have made allegations that they have had affairs with Mr Trump.

Former president Donald Trump fired out three furious all-caps posts on his Truth Social page on 18 March, invoking images of burning cities and World War III while stoking unrest with a call for his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” what he predicted would be his arrest in New York.

Alvin Bragg – the Manhattan district attorney whose office is overseeing a criminal investigation into the former president’s business practices following long-running allegations of fraud – issued a memo to his staff in response, stressing that he does “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”

His internal message did not mention the former president by name or his incendiary rhetoric, but he referred to “public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”

Mr Bragg has been tight-lipped about the case and his office’s work, ensuring in his recent memo that, “as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he earned plaudits when he rapidly reopened the state after a brief stint of closures. He has ardently opposed mask and vaccine mandates. His opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and how some education curricula teach about the history of slavery and Black America have further endeared him to conservatives. After barely winning his first race for governor in 2018, he cruised to re-election in 2022 by almost 20 points.

In January, his company was fined $1.6m after two of its entities were convicted of 17 felonies, marking the first time that the former president and his empire – bolstered by a “culture of fraud and deception,” according to prosecutors – faced criminal consequences after he spent decades trying to avoid them.

Now at the centre of separate investigations from the US Department of Justice and from prosecutors in his hometown of New York and in Georgia, a state he lost to Joe Biden but where he pressed election officials to overturn the results, the leading 2024 Republican candidate for president has suggested that his supporters could respond to his election loss or potentially imminent indictments with violence.

Former President Donald Trump is now claiming a 2018 letter from Michael Cohen’s attorney that failed to prevent him from being charged over illegal campaign contributions to Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign has exonerated him from charges over the same illegal contributions now being considered by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

In a post on his Truth Social website, Mr Trump published a February 2018 letter from Cohen’s then-attorney to the Federal Election Commission in which the lawyer said Cohen’s use of a $130,000 Home Equity Line of Credit to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels not to talk about a 2006 affair she had with Mr Trump was a “private transaction” made with Cohen’s “own money”.

“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,” said the attorney, Stephen Ryan, who represented Cohen at the time, in the letter to the FEC.

In May 2018, Rudy Giuliani screwed things up.

Joining the president’s legal team, the former New York City mayor would go on to have a years-long legal relationship with Mr Trump that resulted in the ageing politician causing far more harm than good.

Years before his bumbling in Ukraine would be seen as a cause for the Democrats’ first impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump, Mr Giuliani would throw a hand grenade into the legal defences of both his boss and former colleague, Michael Cohen, by admitting that Mr Trump himself knew of the payments to women claiming to have had affairs with him.

Speaking on Fox News, in a shocking interview with a bemused Sean Hannity, Mr Giuliani specified that not only the president “did know the general arrangement”, but he also added that the president had reimbursed Cohen with money he characterised as “funnelled” through a law firm. Mr Trump denies this, telling reporters, “He started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight.”

Lawyer Ron Filipkowski shared the clip of Mr Giuliani from 2018 on Thursday.

“I’d like to call, as a surprise witness for the prosecution, 2018 Rudy Giuliani, who BURIES Trump’s defense,” Mr Filipkowski tweeted.

“They funnelled it through a law firm, then the president repaid it,” Mr Giuliani said at the time. “When I heard Cohen’s retainer while he was doing no work, I said, ‘that’s how (Trump’s) repaying it.’”

Former president Donald Trump fuelled a media firestorm with his all-caps prediction of his own arrest, a claim apparently based on reports of a looming indictment from a criminal investigation in New York. His own team followed up to clarify that he did not receive any indications from prosecutors that he had yet been charged or would be imminently arrested.

But his claim fanned the flames of unrest with incendiary rhetoric and demands that his supporters “protest, protest, protest” a then-unannounced decision, with Mr Trump’s allies rushing to his defence and mounting an offensive on his behalf.

He also has used his announcement and his narrative of political persecution to raise money for his 2024 presidential campaign, relying on similar tactics that his fundraising arms have used after the federal law enforcement search of his Mar-a-Lago property last year and his spurious attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.