Former US President Donald Trump has been invited by New York prosecutors to testify before a grand jury investigating hush payments made on his behalf during the 2016 election campaign, according to one of his lawyers.
The jury is investigating Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment in 2016 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from publicly revealing a sexual encounter she claimed to have had years earlier with the then-Republican candidate.
Trump’s attorney, Joseph Tacopina, confirmed the invitation to testify next week Thursday as prosecutors neared a decision on whether to proceed in what would be the first criminal trial against a former US president.
“To me, it’s a lot of ado about nothing,” Tacopina told the AP, adding that in his view prosecutors had not made a decision “whatever” on whether to indict Trump. She said the case has no legal basis.
“It’s just another example of how they use the judicial system as a weapon against you. And in a sense it is unfair,” he noted.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, declined to comment. An invitation to testify before a grand jury, or grand jury, often indicates that formal indictments are imminent.
The New York Times was the first outlet to reveal the invitation.
Trump is accelerating his campaign to take back the White House in 2024, while facing legal trouble on several fronts.
In a long statement on his social network, Trump criticized the investigation as “a political witch hunt that tries to bring down the candidate who leads, by far, the Republican Party” by a “corrupt, depraved and used justice system weapon”.
“I did not commit any fault,” he said.
On the other hand, the Atlanta, Georgia prosecutor has said that decisions are “imminent” after two years of investigation into possible illegal meddling by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election.
At the same time, a special prosecutor from the federal Department of Justice is investigating the attempts of Trump and his allies to annul the election, as well as the presence of confidential documents on his farm in Florida.
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