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02-04-2023
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden declined to comment on Thursday’s indictment of former President Donald Trump as he exited the White House on Friday, sticking to the administration’s strategy of keeping a distance from the probe, as other prominent Democrats urged Trump to cooperate with the criminal justice process.
“We do not comment on any ongoing investigations from here. We’ve been very consistent on that,” Jean-Pierre said when asked about the probe on March 20, days after Trump claimed he would soon be arrested and urged his supporters to protest. “The President has been very clear when it comes to Americans who want to protest: They should do it peacefully.”
Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Fla.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), rallied around the former president and attacked the investigation against him, casting it as a politically motivated stunt executed by a left-leaning prosecutor to sway the 2024 presidential election. McCarthy vowed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would face consequences. DeSantis, who is widely expected to challenge Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, did not mention Trump by name, but said that he would not aid in an extradition request if Trump refuses to travel from Florida to New York to be arrested voluntarily. Graham, meanwhile, predicted that the indictment would end in Trump being found innocent and bolster his chances of winning the 2024 presidential election.
A Manhattan grand jury voted Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump in connection to hush-money 
payments made to Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, a source familiar with the case told Forbes—marking the first-ever indictment of a former U.S. president. While the indictment is under seal and the charges have yet to be made public, Trump is facing more than 30 counts related to business fraud, CNN reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the case. The investigation is widely believed to center on a $130,000 payment Trump’s former lawyer and personal attorney Michael Cohen made to Daniels in exchange for her silence about their alleged 2006 affair (which Trump has denied). Prosecutors were expected to be pursuing charges of falsifying business records against Trump, after federal investigators determined in their 2018 case against Cohen that he was reimbursed for the payments by the Trump Organization under a contract that falsely specified the services were for legal fees. The charge could be elevated to a felony if Manhattan prosecutors can tie it to a second crime, potentially one related to campaign finance violations, since the payment was made to influence the results of the 2016 presidential election, federal prosecutors previously alleged.
Trump, who was in Mar-A-Lago when the indictment was announced, is expected to voluntarily surrender ahead of his anticipated arraigned in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday, his lawyer, Susan Necheles told the New York 
Times. He will likely be fingerprinted and have his mugshot taken before being released under New York bail laws that require most non-violent misdemeanor defendants to be freed on their own recognizance.
Vice President Kamala Harris also refused to comment on the case as she visited Zambia on Friday, calling it an “ongoing criminal investigation.”
In the weeks leading up to the historic indictment, White House officials repeatedly declined to comment on the Manhattan District Attorney’s case, citing the ongoing investigation.
Many prominent Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) were relatively reserved in their reaction to the indictment, encouraging peace from Trump’s supporters and his own cooperation with the criminal justice process. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
