A Man­hat­tan grand ju­ry has vot­ed to in­dict Don­ald Trump on charges in­volv­ing pay­ments made dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to si­lence claims of an ex­tra­mar­i­tal sex­u­al en­counter, the first-ever crim­i­nal case against a for­mer U.S. pres­i­dent and a jolt to Trump’s bid to re­take the White House in 2024.

The in­dict­ment, con­firmed Thurs­day by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and oth­er peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter who were not au­tho­rized to dis­cuss sealed crim­i­nal charges, is an ex­tra­or­di­nary de­vel­op­ment af­ter years of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his busi­ness, po­lit­i­cal and per­son­al deal­ings. It is like­ly to gal­va­nize crit­ics who say Trump lied and cheat­ed his way to the top and em­bold­en sup­port­ers who feel the Re­pub­li­can is be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed by a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pros­e­cu­tor.

Trump, who has de­nied any wrong­do­ing and has re­peat­ed­ly at­tacked the in­ves­ti­ga­tion as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, was ex­pect­ed to sur­ren­der to au­thor­i­ties next week, ac­cord­ing to a per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter who was not au­tho­rized to dis­cuss a mat­ter that re­mained un­der seal.

In bring­ing the charges, the Man­hat­tan dis­trict at­tor­ney, Alvin Bragg, is em­brac­ing an un­usu­al case that had been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by two pre­vi­ous sets of pros­e­cu­tors, both of which de­clined to take the po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­plo­sive step of seek­ing Trump’s in­dict­ment.

In the weeks lead­ing up to the in­dict­ment, Trump railed about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on so­cial me­dia and urged sup­port­ers to protest on his be­half, prompt­ing tighter se­cu­ri­ty around the Man­hat­tan crim­i­nal cour­t­house.

Trump faces oth­er po­ten­tial le­gal per­ils as he seeks to re­assert con­trol of the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty and stave off a slew of one-time al­lies who are seek­ing or are like­ly to op­pose him for the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

The dis­trict at­tor­ney in At­lanta has for two years been in­ves­ti­gat­ing ef­forts by Trump and his al­lies to med­dle in Geor­gia’s 2020 vote count. And a U.S. Jus­tice De­part­ment spe­cial coun­sel is in­ves­ti­gat­ing Trump’s stor­age of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at his Mar-a-La­go home in Flori­da and his ef­forts to re­verse his elec­tion loss.

____

Sto­ry by MICHAEL R. SISAK, JEN­NIFER PELTZ and ER­IC TUCK­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Colleen Long in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.