Don­ald Trump has been in­dict­ed by a Man­hat­tan grand ju­ry, a his­toric reck­on­ing af­ter years of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to his per­son­al, po­lit­i­cal and busi­ness deal­ings and an abrupt jolt to his bid to re­take the White House.

The ex­act na­ture of the charges was un­clear Fri­day be­cause the in­dict­ment re­mained un­der seal, but they stem from pay­ments made dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to si­lence claims of an ex­tra­mar­i­tal sex­u­al en­counter. Pros­e­cu­tors said they were work­ing to co­or­di­nate Trump’s sur­ren­der, which could hap­pen ear­ly next week. They did not say whether they in­tend­ed to seek prison time in the event of a con­vic­tion, a de­vel­op­ment that wouldn’t pre­vent Trump from seek­ing and as­sum­ing the pres­i­den­cy.

The in­dict­ment, the first against a for­mer U.S. pres­i­dent, in­jects a lo­cal dis­trict at­tor­ney’s of­fice in­to the heart of a na­tion­al pres­i­den­tial race and ush­ers in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in a city that the ex-pres­i­dent for decades called home. Ar­riv­ing at a time of deep po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions, the charges are like­ly to re­in­force rather than re­shape du­el­ing per­spec­tives of those who see ac­count­abil­i­ty as long over­due and those who, like Trump, feel the Re­pub­li­can is be­ing tar­get­ed for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es by a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pros­e­cu­tor.

Trump, who has de­nied any wrong­do­ing and has re­peat­ed­ly as­sailed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, called the in­dict­ment “po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion” and pre­dict­ed it would dam­age De­moc­rats in 2024. In a state­ment con­firm­ing the charges, de­fense lawyers Su­san Necheles and Joseph Tacopina said Trump “did not com­mit any crime. We will vig­or­ous­ly fight this po­lit­i­cal pros­e­cu­tion in court.”

A spokesman for the Man­hat­tan dis­trict at­tor­ney’s of­fice con­firmed the in­dict­ment and said pros­e­cu­tors had reached out to Trump’s de­fense team to co­or­di­nate a sur­ren­der. Tacopina said Trump is “like­ly” to turn him­self in on Tues­day.

Trump was asked to sur­ren­der Fri­day, but his lawyers said the Se­cret Ser­vice need­ed ad­di­tion­al time as they made se­cu­ri­ty prepa­ra­tions, two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The peo­ple spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they couldn’t pub­licly dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty de­tails.

Dis­trict At­tor­ney Alvin Bragg left his of­fice Thurs­day evening with­out com­ment­ing.

The case cen­tres on well-chron­i­cled al­le­ga­tions from a pe­ri­od in 2016 when Trump’s celebri­ty past col­lid­ed with his po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions. Pros­e­cu­tors for months scru­ti­nized mon­ey paid to porn ac­tor Stormy Daniels and for­mer Play­boy mod­el Karen Mc­Dou­gal, whom he feared would go pub­lic with claims that they had ex­tra­mar­i­tal sex­u­al en­coun­ters with him.

The tim­ing of the in­dict­ment ap­peared to come as a sur­prise to Trump cam­paign of­fi­cials fol­low­ing news re­ports that crim­i­nal charges were like­ly weeks away. The for­mer pres­i­dent was at Mar-a-La­go, his Flori­da es­tate, on Thurs­day and filmed an in­ter­view with a con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor ear­li­er in the day.

For a man whose pres­i­den­cy was de­fined by one oblit­er­at­ed norm af­ter an­oth­er, the in­dict­ment sets up yet an­oth­er nev­er-be­fore-seen spec­ta­cle — a for­mer pres­i­dent hav­ing his fin­ger­prints and mug shot tak­en, and then fac­ing ar­raign­ment. For se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, his book­ing is ex­pect­ed to be care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed to avoid crowds in­side or out­side the cour­t­house.

The pros­e­cu­tion al­so means that Trump will have to si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fight for his free­dom and po­lit­i­cal fu­ture, while al­so fend­ing off po­ten­tial­ly more per­ilous le­gal threats, in­clud­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to at­tempts by him and his al­lies to un­do the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion as well as in­to the hoard­ing of hun­dreds of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments.

In fact, New York was un­til re­cent­ly seen as an un­like­ly con­tender to be the first place to pros­e­cute Trump, who con­tin­ues to face long-run­ning in­ves­ti­ga­tions in At­lanta and Wash­ing­ton that could al­so re­sult in charges. Un­like those in­quiries, the Man­hat­tan case con­cerns al­le­ga­tions against Trump that oc­curred be­fore he be­came pres­i­dent and are un­re­lat­ed to his much-pub­li­cized ef­forts to over­turn the elec­tion.

The in­dict­ment comes as Trump seeks to re­assert con­trol of the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty and stave off a slew of one-time al­lies who may threat­en his bid for the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. An ex­pect­ed lead­ing ri­val in the race, Flori­da Gov. Ron De­San­tis, called the in­dict­ment “un-Amer­i­can” in a state­ment Thurs­day night that point­ed­ly did not men­tion Trump’s name.

In bring­ing the charges, Bragg, the Man­hat­tan dis­trict at­tor­ney, is em­brac­ing an un­usu­al case that was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by two pre­vi­ous sets of pros­e­cu­tors, both of which de­clined to take the po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­plo­sive step of seek­ing Trump’s in­dict­ment. The case may al­so turn in part on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a key wit­ness, Trump’s for­mer lawyer and fix­er Michael Co­hen, who plead­ed guilty to fed­er­al charges aris­ing from the hush mon­ey pay­ments, in­clud­ing mak­ing false state­ments.

The probe’s fate seemed un­cer­tain un­til word got out in ear­ly March that Bragg had in­vit­ed Trump to tes­ti­fy be­fore a grand ju­ry, a sig­nal that pros­e­cu­tors were close to bring­ing charges.

Trump’s at­tor­neys de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion, but a lawyer close­ly al­lied with the for­mer pres­i­dent briefly tes­ti­fied in an ef­fort to un­der­cut Co­hen’s cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Trump him­self raised an­tic­i­pa­tion that he would be in­dict­ed soon, is­su­ing a state­ment ear­li­er this month in which he pre­dict­ed an im­mi­nent ar­rest and called for protests. He did not re­peat that call in a fresh state­ment Thurs­day, but the New York Po­lice De­part­ment told its 36,000 of­fi­cers to be ful­ly mo­bi­lized and ready to re­spond to any po­ten­tial protests or un­rest.

Late in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Co­hen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sex­u­al en­counter with Trump a decade ear­li­er af­ter they met at a celebri­ty golf tour­na­ment.

Co­hen was then re­im­bursed by Trump’s com­pa­ny, the Trump Or­ga­ni­za­tion, which al­so re­ward­ed the lawyer with bonus­es and ex­tra pay­ments logged in­ter­nal­ly as le­gal ex­pens­es. Over sev­er­al months, Co­hen said, the com­pa­ny paid him $420,000.

Ear­li­er in 2016, Co­hen al­so arranged for the pub­lish­er of the su­per­mar­ket tabloid the Na­tion­al En­quir­er to pay Mc­Dou­gal $150,000 to squelch her sto­ry of a Trump af­fair in a jour­nal­is­ti­cal­ly du­bi­ous prac­tice known as “catch-and-kill.”

The pay­ments to the women were in­tend­ed to buy se­cre­cy, but they back­fired al­most im­me­di­ate­ly as de­tails of the arrange­ments leaked to the news me­dia.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in New York ul­ti­mate­ly charged Co­hen in 2018 with vi­o­lat­ing fed­er­al cam­paign fi­nance laws, ar­gu­ing that the pay­ments amount­ed to im­per­mis­si­ble help to Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Co­hen plead­ed guilty to those charges and un­re­lat­ed tax eva­sion counts and served time in fed­er­al prison.

Trump was im­pli­cat­ed in court fil­ings as hav­ing knowl­edge of the arrange­ments — oblique­ly re­ferred to in charg­ing doc­u­ments as “In­di­vid­ual 1” — but U.S. pros­e­cu­tors at the time balked at bring­ing charges against him. The Jus­tice De­part­ment has a long-time pol­i­cy against in­dict­ing a sit­ting pres­i­dent in fed­er­al court.

Bragg’s pre­de­ces­sor as dis­trict at­tor­ney, Cyrus Vance Jr., then took up the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in 2019. While that probe ini­tial­ly fo­cused on the hush mon­ey pay­ments, Vance’s pros­e­cu­tors moved on to oth­er mat­ters, in­clud­ing an ex­am­i­na­tion of Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings and tax strate­gies.

Vance ul­ti­mate­ly charged the Trump Or­ga­ni­za­tion and its chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer with tax fraud re­lat­ed to fringe ben­e­fits paid to some of the com­pa­ny’s top ex­ec­u­tives.

The hush mon­ey mat­ter be­came known around the D.A.’s of­fice as the “zom­bie case,” with pros­e­cu­tors re­vis­it­ing it pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly but nev­er opt­ing to bring charges.

Bragg saw it dif­fer­ent­ly. Af­ter the Trump Or­ga­ni­za­tion was con­vict­ed on the tax fraud charges in De­cem­ber, he brought fresh eyes to the well-worn case, hir­ing long-time white-col­lar pros­e­cu­tor Matthew Colan­ge­lo to over­see the probe and con­ven­ing a new grand ju­ry.

Co­hen be­came a key wit­ness, meet­ing with pros­e­cu­tors near­ly two-dozen times, turn­ing over emails, record­ings and oth­er ev­i­dence and tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore the grand ju­ry.

Trump has long de­cried the Man­hat­tan in­ves­ti­ga­tion as “the great­est witch hunt in his­to­ry.” He has al­so lashed out at Bragg, call­ing the pros­e­cu­tor, who is Black, racist against white peo­ple.

The crim­i­nal charges in New York are the lat­est sal­vo in a pro­found schism be­tween Trump and his home­town — a reck­on­ing for a one-time favourite son who grew rich and fa­mous build­ing sky­scrap­ers, hob­nob­bing with celebri­ties and grac­ing the pages of the city’s gos­sip press.

Trump, who fa­mous­ly riffed in 2016 that he “could stand in the mid­dle of Fifth Av­enue and shoot some­body” and “wouldn’t lose vot­ers,” now faces a threat to his lib­er­ty in a bor­ough where more than 75% of vot­ers — many of them po­ten­tial ju­rors — went against him in the last elec­tion.  —NEW YORK (AP)

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Sto­ry by MICHAEL R. SISAK, ER­IC TUCK­ER and COLLEEN LONG | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Er­ic Tuck­er and Colleen Long re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Bob­by Caina Cal­van, Jill Colvin and Jen­nifer Peltz con­tributed to this re­port.