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    Trump Is Indicted, Becoming First Ex-President to Face Criminal Charges

    A Manhattan grand jury indicted Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.On Thursday evening, after news of the charges had been widely reported, the district attorney’s office confirmed that Mr. Trump had been indicted and that prosecutors had contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to authorities in Manhattan.Mr. Trump is likely to turn himself in on Tuesday, at which point the former president will be photographed and fingerprinted in the bowels of a New York State courthouse, with Secret Service agents in tow. He will then be arraigned, at which point the specific charges will be unsealed. Mr. Trump faces more than two dozen counts, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the indictment now threatens to puncture.But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House — which examined his strong-arm tactics on the international stage, his attempts to overturn the election and his summoning of a mob to the steps of the U.S. Capitol — this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush-money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.In a statement, Mr. Trump lashed out at the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, and portrayed the case as the continuation of a politically motivated witch hunt against him.“This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history,” Mr. Trump said in the statement, calling Mr. Bragg “a disgrace” and casting himself as “a completely innocent person.”The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has been the target of Mr. Trump’s venomous attacks. Anna Watts for The New York TimesMr. Trump, who has consistently denied all wrongdoing, has already called on his followers to protest his arrest, in language reminiscent of his social media posts in the weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.“President Trump did not commit any crime,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Susan R. Necheles and Joseph Tacopina, said in a statement. “We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.”The first sign that an indictment was imminent on Thursday came just before 2 in the afternoon, when the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the Lower Manhattan building where the grand jury was sitting. One of them carried a copy of the penal law, which was most likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted.The team prosecuting Mr. Trump was led by Matthew Colangelo, center, and Susan Hoffinger, center left, as well as Chris Conroy.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesNearly three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the official process of filing the indictment, arriving about two minutes before the office closed for the day.For weeks, the atmosphere outside the district attorney’s office had resembled a circus, with television trucks and protesters surrounding the building. But the fervor had cooled by Thursday, and the outskirts of the office were emptier than they had been in weeks.Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor to indict Mr. Trump, but he might not be the last. Mr. Trump’s actions surrounding his electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.But the Manhattan indictment, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a volatile new phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. And it will throw the race for the Republican nomination — which he is leading in most polls — into uncharted territory.Under normal circumstances, an indictment would deal a fatal blow to a presidential candidacy. But Mr. Trump is not a normal candidate. He has already said that he would not abandon the race if he were charged, and the case might even help him in the short term as he paints himself as a political martyr.The indictment also raises the prospect of an explosive backlash from Mr. Trump, who often uses his legal woes to stoke the rage of die-hard supporters. Already, the former president has used bigoted language to attack Mr. Bragg, the first Black man to lead the district attorney’s office, calling him a “racist,” an “animal” and a “radical left prosecutor.”Mary Kelley, a supporter of Mr. Trump, on the bridge outside of Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday.Josh Ritchie for The New York TimesIn the past, Mr. Trump has lashed out when feeling cornered, encouraging the violent attack on the Capitol as he contested the results of the 2020 presidential election. That assault on the seat of government demonstrated that Mr. Trump’s most zealous followers were willing to resort to violence on his behalf as he sought to overturn the election results.While the specific charges in the Manhattan case against the former president remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s case centers on a $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms. Daniels.Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, made the payment in the final days of the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump later reimbursed him, signing monthly checks while serving as president.Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors appear to have zeroed in on the way Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, handled the reimbursement to Mr. Cohen. In internal documents, Trump Organization employees falsely recorded the repayments as legal expenses, and the company invented a bogus retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen to justify them.Mr. Cohen, who broke with Mr. Trump in 2018 and later testified before Congress as well as the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump, has said that the former president knew about the phony legal expenses and retainer agreement.In New York, it can be a crime to falsify business records, and Mr. Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter and outside legal experts.But to charge falsifying business records as a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an effort to commit or conceal a second crime.That second crime could be a violation of election law. Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors might argue that the payment to Ms. Daniels represented an illicit contribution to Mr. Trump’s campaign: The money silenced Ms. Daniels, aiding his candidacy at a crucial time.“Campaign finance violations may seem like small potatoes next to possible charges for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, but they also go to the heart of the integrity of the electoral process,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and a recognized expert in New York state election law.If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.Yet a conviction is not a sure thing, and Mr. Bragg’s case might apply a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges. A New York Times review of relevant cases and interviews with election law experts strongly suggest that New York State prosecutors have never before filed an election law case involving a federal campaign.An untested case against any defendant, let alone a former president of the United States, carries the risk that a court could throw out or limit the charges.Mr. Trump will not be the first person charged over the hush-money payment. In 2018, Mr. Cohen was federally prosecuted for the payment and pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations.Michael D. Cohen, right, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, will be a crucial witness against him. Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesMr. Cohen is likely to become Mr. Bragg’s star witness at trial. While his past crimes will make him a target for Mr. Trump’s lawyers — who can be expected to attack the former fixer’s credibility at every turn — prosecutors will be likely to counter that Mr. Cohen lied on behalf of Mr. Trump, and that his story has been consistent for years.In a statement, Mr. Cohen said he took “solace in validating the adage that no one is above the law; not even a former president.”His lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said that “Michael Cohen made the brave decision to speak truth to power and accept the consequences,” and that “he has done so ever since.”Mr. Cohen will not be the prosecution’s only witness: David Pecker, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump and the former publisher of The National Enquirer, testified before the grand jury twice this year. He is likely to be able to corroborate important aspects of Mr. Cohen’s story, including that Mr. Trump wanted to bury embarrassing stories to protect his presidential campaign, not just his family, as his lawyers contend.Soon after Mr. Trump began his campaign in 2015, he hosted Mr. Pecker for a meeting at Trump Tower, during which the publisher agreed to look out for stories that might damage Mr. Trump’s candidacy.One such story arose in the summer of 2016, when Karen McDougal, Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1998, said that she had had an affair with Mr. Trump. She reached a $150,000 agreement with the tabloid, which bought the rights to her story to suppress it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”When Ms. Daniels tried to secure a similar arrangement, Mr. Pecker didn’t take the deal. But he and the tabloid’s former top editor helped broker Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Daniels.Despite the potential legal obstacles, and questions about Mr. Cohen’s credibility, if the case does go to trial, the salacious details could sink Mr. Trump. While white-collar prosecutions are often dry and procedural, this one will likely have some built-in jury appeal: a defendant charged with a seedy crime in a city where he is loathed by many.Any trial is months away. It will take time for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to argue that the case should be thrown out. That timeline raises the extraordinary possibility of a trial unfolding in the thick of the 2024 presidential campaign.The case would come before a jury more than five years after Mr. Cohen’s federal guilty plea prompted the district attorney’s office to open an investigation into Mr. Trump’s role in the hush-money saga. The inquiry began under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who did not seek re-election.Over the years, the investigation expanded to include whether Mr. Trump had lied about his net worth on annual financial statements. Although Mr. Vance’s prosecutors were marching toward an indictment of Mr. Trump for inflating his net worth, soon after Mr. Bragg took office, he developed concerns about proving the case.But he continued to scrutinize Mr. Trump. And in January, a few months after his prosecutors began revisiting the potential hush-money case, Mr. Bragg impaneled the grand jury that has now indicted Mr. Trump.Maggie Haberman More

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    What’s an Indictment and What Will Happen When Trump Is Arrested

    He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.If he surrenders Tuesday, Donald J. Trump is expected to walk through the routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York now that a grand jury has indicted him in connection with his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star. But the unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief will be anything but routine.Accommodations may be made for Mr. Trump. While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.Mr. Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in Lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesman for the federal agency, Anthony J. Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Mr. Trump.It may take several days for Mr. Trump to appear at the courthouse. Now that the grand jury has voted to indict him — meaning to charge him with felony crimes — the indictment will remain sealed until his expected arraignment on Tuesday, when the charges will be formally revealed.After the indictment, prosecutors contacted Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers and negotiated the terms of his surrender, a common practice in white-collar investigations.Lawyers for Mr. Trump, who is running for president a third time, said late Thursday that he will surrender and he is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday.After he is arraigned, he is almost certain to be released on his own recognizance, because the indictment will likely contain only nonviolent felony charges; under New York law, prosecutors cannot request that a defendant be held on bail in such cases.The former president is already using the charges as part of a campaign strategy to energize his base.Surrender is not in the confrontational former president’s DNA, and he often seems to relish antagonizing and attacking prosecutors who have investigated him, such as Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who secured Thursday’s indictment. He has called Mr. Bragg, who is Black, “a racist” and an “animal” and said that his investigation was politically motivated.In the unlikely event that the former president refuses to surrender, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has already said that his state “will not assist in an extradition request,” should one come from New York authorities. Still, if the New York prosecutors were to actually seek Mr. Trump’s extradition, and Mr. DeSantis attempted to protect his Republican rival, he could possibly face legal action himself. More

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    Donald Trump enfrenta cargos penales

    Trump será el primer expresidente estadounidense en enfrentar cargos criminales. El caso, cuyos detalles se desconocen, está centrado en un pago realizado a una actriz pornográfica a cambio de su silencio.Donald Trump fue imputado en Manhattan este jueves por su rol en el pago de un soborno a cambio de silencio a una actriz pornográfica, según cinco personas con conocimiento del asunto. Esta es una decisión histórica que moverá los cimientos de la contienda presidencial de 2024 y que por siempre marcará a Trump como el primer expresidente de la nación en enfrentar cargos criminales.El jueves por la noche, después de que se difundiera la noticia de los cargos, la oficina del fiscal de distrito confirmó que Trump había sido acusado y que los fiscales se habían puesto en contacto con el abogado de Trump para coordinar su entrega. Dos personas con conocimiento del caso dijeron que se esperaba que Trump se entregara y enfrentara la lectura de cargos a principios de la próxima semana, momento en el que se revelarán los cargos específicos.Por décadas, Trump ha logrado evadir las acusaciones penales a pesar de un constante escrutinio y repetidas investigaciones, lo que creó cierta aura de invencibilidad legal que esta acusación formal ahora amenaza con romper.Sus acciones vinculadas a su derrota electoral de 2020 son el enfoque de otra investigación federal, y una fiscal de Georgia está en las etapas finales de una investigación a los intentos de Trump por revertir el resultado de las elecciones en ese estado.Pero a diferencia de las investigaciones que surgieron durante su periodo en la Casa Blanca, este caso se basa en un sórdido episodio que precede a la presidencia de Trump. La estrella de telerrealidad convertido en candidato presidencial, que conmocionó a la clase política al ganar la Casa Blanca, enfrenta las consecuencias del pago de un soborno monetario a cambio de silencio para acallar un escándalo sexual en los últimos días de su campaña presidencial de 2016.Este jueves, los tres fiscales principales en la investigación a Trump entraron al recinto donde estaba el gran jurado, en los minutos previos a la reunión programada del panel, a las 02:00 p. m. Uno llevaba una copia del derecho penal —con visibles notas adhesivas Post-it— la cual probablemente fue usada para leerles los estatutos penales al gran jurado antes de su votación. Aproximadamente tres horas después, los fiscales entraron a la secretaría del tribunal por una puerta trasera, para comenzar el proceso de la presentación de la acusación formal.Durante semanas, la atmósfera alrededor de la fiscalía parecía la de un circo. Pero el fervor se había calmado en los últimos días, y este jueves, las inmediaciones del recinto estuvieron más vacías.Trump ha negado una y otra vez haber cometido algún delito y ha atacado a Bragg, demócrata, al cual ha acusado de liderar una persecución con fines políticos. También ha negado haber tenido un amorío con la actriz pornográfica, Stormy Daniels, quien había estado tratando de vender su historia de una cita con Trump durante la campaña presidencial.Estos son otros datos que necesitas saber:Trump siempre se ha referido a la investigación como una conspiración mayor promovida por sus oponentes políticos. Aunque insultó a Bragg, optó por culpar a su sucesor en el Despacho Oval. “Creo que esta caza de brujas será contraproducente para Joe Biden”, dijo.El testigo principal de la fiscalía es Michael D. Cohen, antiguo colaborador de Trump que pagó los 130.000 dólares para que Daniels guardara silencio. Cohen ha declarado que Trump le dio la orden de sobornar a Daniels, y que Trump y su empresa familiar, la Organización Trump, ayudaron a ocultar toda la situación. Los registros internos de la compañía identificaron de manera falsa los reembolsos como gastos legales, lo que ayudó a ocultar el verdadero propósito de los pagos.Aunque todavía no se conocen los cargos específicos, los abogados de Bragg se han centrado en ese soborno y en los falsos registros creados por la compañía de Trump. No hay garantías de que se produzca un fallo condenatorio: el intento de combinar un cargo relacionado con los registros falsos con una violación de las leyes electorales en relación con el pago a Daniels estaría basado en una teoría legal que no ha sido evaluada por ningún juez, lo que incrementa la posibilidad de que un tribunal pueda desestimar o limitar los cargos.La acusación formal, producto de una investigación de casi cinco años, inaugura una fase nueva y volátil en la vida de Trump después de la presidencia, en un momento en el que intenta por tercera vez ocupar la Casa Blanca. Además, podría hacer que la contienda por la candidatura republicana —la cual lidera en la mayoría de las encuestas— incursione en un territorio desconocido.Bragg es el primer fiscal que acusa formalmente a Trump. Es probable que se convierta en una figura nacional, y tendrá que lidiar con una agresiva atención política.Maggie Haberman More

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    Donald Trump, Now Under Indictment

    Readers speculate about the impact and wisdom of bringing the hush money charges.To the Editor:Re “Trump Indicted” (nytimes.com, March 30):Our country is struggling to determine if Donald Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels warrant his indictment. Some consider this action as inconsequential compared with his actions in Georgia in an effort to overturn the election or with his coup plot on Jan. 6.To them the hush money payment and concealment were just a continuation of his immoral personal and business practices before his election and of minimal significance.It was, however, in fact a brazen attempt to influence the results of the election. His actions in Georgia and his attempted coup were brazen attempts to ensure his re-election. They all reveal a basic principle of Trump actions: One can cheat if necessary to attain or retain power.Each action was an equally serious attack on the core principles of our democracy. Each one must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.Only this will ensure that he does not try them again.Sidney Weissman Highland Park, Ill.To the Editor:Folks, be careful what you wish for. Yes, the evidence is compelling that Donald Trump paid hush money to silence Stormy Daniels.But let’s be pragmatic. The worst transgression that Mr. Trump committed was against his wife, who bears the deep and endless scars of humiliation. And if the D.A. decides to test the uncharted waters by linking the Stormy Daniels payoff to election violations, he not only enrages Mr. Trump’s base but also sets himself up for failure.Why then provoke Mr. Trump’s legion with a spark to cause mayhem when more damaging charges against Mr. Trump are under review?Howard QuinnBronxTo the Editor:Without in any way minimizing or discounting the politics surrounding an indictment, what I find really galling is that an indictment of Donald Trump, whether in New York or Georgia, will provide him with yet another opportunity to raise funds from his benighted constituency.Lawrence WeismanWestport, Conn.To the Editor:Most major, non-right-wing media in this country, publicly and privately, have been asking themselves for years about Donald Trump: How does he get away with this stuff? Seeing a man with no experience in government and no clearly demonstrated ability to lead the government and the public beyond his core supporters, we wondered: When will the shoe drop?With the indictment in the Stormy Daniels case, and potential indictments in Georgia and in other investigations, people who are not in love with him will have to stop and think: Should this guy really be president again?When Mr. Trump first ran in 2016, most of the public knew him only as a figure on television and by his pumped-up P.R. reputation as a successful business executive. That image was fixed.An indictment, with even more coming, could shock people out of complacent attitudes and force urgent reassessment. Stay tuned.Doug TerryOlney, Md.The writer is a former radio and television reporter and a current documentary producer.To the Editor:Most know the parable of the emperor who parades around naked, asserting that he is wearing the most beautiful garments in the world. His faithful subjects, afraid of being deemed disloyal fools, dismiss the reality they see and praise the emperor’s apparel.In today’s world, a former president struts about claiming to be clothed in innocence. His followers, fearful of his wrath, ignore their own eyes, affirming his innocence.In the old fable, it was a child who perceived the stark reality and proclaimed the obvious, that the emperor had no clothes. In the present-day story, it will be up to a jury to see through the ex-president’s preening about in his fake cloak of innocence and to declare the naked truth: “Guilty!”Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, OhioTo the Editor:I cannot help but be surprised at the consistently sexist ways in which the national media not only nonchalantly reduces Stephanie Gregory Clifford to her professional pornographic name, Stormy Daniels, but also refers to her simply as a “porn star,” a “porn actress,” an “adult film star,” etc.Ms. Clifford’s appearance in two well-recognized films by Judd Apatow (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”), her roles as a successful producer and director in the adult film industry, as well as her relative success as an American businesswoman are hardly ever mentioned.Her role as a young successful American businesswoman (even if we don’t approve of the industry in which she works), and the professionalism and grace with which Stephanie Gregory Clifford has dealt with the legal troubles of a former American president, deserve their proper recognition and definitely more validation by the national media.Alejandro LugoPark Forest, Ill.The writer has taught anthropology and gender studies at several universities in the last three decades and is a co-editor of “Gender Matters: Rereading Michelle Z. Rosaldo.”To the Editor:I feel as if I am forever forced to watch a Trump soap opera called “Days of His Lies.”William Dodd BrownChicago More

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    Trump Hush-Money Case Timeline: What Led to Indictment

    The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Donald J. Trump’s hush-money payments to a pornographic film star, which led to the indictment of the former president, has spanned nearly five years.Here are some key moments:Aug. 21, 2018Michael D. Cohen says he arranged hush-money payments for the president, and the investigation begins.Mr. Cohen, previously a personal lawyer and fixer for Mr. Trump, pleaded guilty to federal crimes and told a court that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange hush-money payments to two women. The payments were made during the 2016 campaign to keep the women from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had conducted with Mr. Trump.Soon after Mr. Cohen’s admission, the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened an investigation to examine if the payments broke New York State laws. The office soon paused the inquiry at the request of federal prosecutors, who were still looking into the same conduct.August 2019The district attorney’s office subpoenas the Trump Organization.After federal prosecutors said that they had “effectively concluded” their investigation, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney at the time, revived his own inquiry. Late in the month, prosecutors in his office issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization and another subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, demanding eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns.Sept. 19, 2019Mr. Trump’s lawyers sue to protect his tax returns.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, argued that a sitting president cannot be criminally investigated. It led to a lengthy delay.July 9, 2020Mr. Vance wins his first key victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.After appellate judges ruled against Mr. Trump, the lawsuit found its way to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled that the presidency did not shield Mr. Trump from criminal inquiries and that he had no absolute right to block the release of his tax returns.The ruling left Mr. Trump with the opportunity to raise different objections to Mr. Vance’s subpoena.AUTUMN 2020The investigation intensifies.Prosecutors interviewed employees of the main bank and insurance company that serve Mr. Trump and issued several new subpoenas.The district attorney’s office also signaled in another court filing that it had grounds to investigate the president for tax fraud.The investigation that led to the indictment of Donald J. Trump has spanned nearly five years.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021The Supreme Court denies Mr. Trump’s final bid to block the release of his returns.The brief unsigned order was a decisive defeat for Mr. Trump and a turning point in Mr. Vance’s investigation.Just hours later, eight years of financial records were handed over to Mr. Vance’s office.March 1, 2021The investigation’s focus turns to a top executive.In the spring, Mr. Vance’s prosecutors set their sights on Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s long-serving chief financial officer, whom they hoped to pressure into cooperating with their investigation.The prosecutors were particularly interested in whether the Trump Organization handed out valuable benefits to Mr. Weisselberg as a form of untaxed compensation.July 1, 2021The Trump Organization is charged with running a 15-year tax scheme.When Mr. Weisselberg refused to testify against his boss, prosecutors announced charges against him and Mr. Trump’s company, saying that the company helped its executives evade taxes by compensating them with benefits such as free cars and apartments that were hidden from the authorities.JAN. 1, 2022A new Manhattan district attorney takes office.Mr. Vance left office, and his successor, Alvin L. Bragg, took over the case. Both are Democrats.Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, retained two of the investigation’s leaders, Mark F. Pomerantz, an experienced former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer, and Carey Dunne, Mr. Vance’s general counsel.Feb. 23, 2022Two prosecutors resign, leaving the investigation’s future in doubt.After Mr. Bragg expressed reservations about the case, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne suspended the presentation of evidence about Mr. Trump to a grand jury. A month later, they resigned, prompting a public uproar over Mr. Bragg’s decision not to proceed with an indictment.In his resignation letter, which was later obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Pomerantz said that Mr. Trump had been guilty of numerous felonies.Aug. 18, 2022Mr. Bragg’s investigation continues.After staying mostly silent through weeks of criticism, the district attorney publicly discussed his office’s investigation of Mr. Trump for the first time. His fundamental message: The inquiry would continue.Aug. 18, 2022Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty and agrees to testify against the Trump Organization.Though the chief financial officer declined to turn on Mr. Trump himself, he agreed to testify at the October trial against the company that he had served for nearly half a century.Late Summer, 2022The prosecutors turn back to hush money.After several months, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors returned to the long-running investigation’s original focus: a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who said she had a sexual relationship with Mr. Trump.Dec. 24, 2022The Trump Organization is convicted, securing a significant victory for the district attorney.Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors won a conviction of Mr. Trump’s family business, convincing a jury that the company was guilty of tax fraud and other crimes.January 2023The district attorney impanels a new grand jury.The grand jury met throughout the next three months and heard testimony about the hush-money payment from at least nine witnesses.Midwinter 2023Prosecutors signal that an indictment is likely, offering Mr. Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury.Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.March 18, 2023Mr. Trump predicts his arrest and calls for protests.Without any direct knowledge, the former president posted on his Truth Social account that he would be arrested three days later and sought to rally supporters to his side. His prediction was soon walked back, and he was not arrested at that time.March 30, 2023Mr. Trump is indicted by a grand jury.The charges, which are still unknown, will be the first against any president, current or former. More

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    Do You Live in a ‘Tight’ State or a ‘Loose’ One? Turns Out It Matters Quite a Bit.

    Political biases are omnipresent, but what we don’t fully understand yet is how they come about in the first place.In 2014, Michele J. Gelfand, a professor of psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business formerly at the University of Maryland, and Jesse R. Harrington, then a PhD. candidate, conducted a study designed to rank the 50 states on a scale of “tightness” and “looseness.”Appropriately titled “Tightness-Looseness Across the 50 United States,” the study calculated a catalog of measures for each state, including the incidence of natural disasters, disease prevalence, residents’ levels of openness and conscientiousness, drug and alcohol use, homelessness and incarceration rates.Gelfand and Harrington predicted that “‘tight’ states would exhibit a higher incidence of natural disasters, greater environmental vulnerability, fewer natural resources, greater incidence of disease and higher mortality rates, higher population density, and greater degrees of external threat.”The South dominated the tight states: Mississippi, Alabama Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina. With two exceptions — Nevada and Hawaii — states in New England and on the West Coast were the loosest: California, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont.In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump carried all 10 of the top “tight” states; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden carried all 10 of the top “loose” states.Gelfand continued to pursue this line of research, publishing “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World” in 2018, in which she described the results of a 2016 pre-election survey she and two colleagues had commissioned:The results were telling: People who felt the country was facing greater threats desired greater tightness. This desire, in turn, correctly predicted their support for Trump. In fact, desired tightness predicted support for Trump far better than other measures. For example, a desire for tightness predicted a vote for Trump with 44 times more accuracy than other popular measures of authoritarianism.The 2016 election, Gelfand continued, “turned largely on primal cultural reflexes — ones that had been conditioned not only by cultural forces, but by a candidate who was able to exploit them.”In a 2019 interview, Gelfand said:Some groups have much stronger norms than others; they’re tight. Others have much weaker norms; they’re loose. Of course, all cultures have areas in which they are tight and loose — but cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize norms and compliance with them.Cultural differences, Gelfand continued, “have a certain logic — a rationale that makes good sense,” noting that “cultures that have threats need rules to coordinate to survive (think about how incredibly coordinated Japan is in response to natural disasters). But cultures that don’t have a lot of threat can afford to be more permissive and loose.”The tight-loose concept, Gelfand argued,is an important framework to understand the rise of President Donald Trump and other leaders in Poland, Hungary, Italy, and France, among others. The gist is this: when people perceive threat — whether real or imagined, they want strong rules and autocratic leaders to help them survive. My research has found that within minutes of exposing study participants to false information about terrorist incidents, overpopulation, pathogen outbreaks and natural disasters, their minds tightened. They wanted stronger rules and punishments.There are significantly different costs and benefits to tight and loose communities. In her book, Gelfand writes that tightness encourages conscientiousness, social order and self-control on the plus side, along with close-mindedness, conventional thinking and cultural inertia on the minus side. Looseness, Gelfand posits, fosters tolerance, creativity and adaptability, along with such liabilities as social disorder, a lack of coordination and impulsive behavior.I recently contacted Laura Niemi, a professor of psychology at Cornell, posing a series of questions that included these two:If liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism, why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?Along the same lines, if liberals and conservatives hold differing moral visions, not just about what makes a good government but about what makes a good life, what turned the relationship between left and right from competitive to mutually destructive?In her emailed reply, Niemi contended that sensitivity to various types of threat is a key factor in driving differences between the far left and far right. She cited research thatfound 47 percent of the most extreme conservatives strongly endorsed the view that “The world is becoming a more and more dangerous place,” compared to 19 percent of the most extreme liberals. Being threatened by the world, in turn, correlated with support for the Muslim ban and building a U.S.-Mexico wall. But if perceived threat were measured by endorsement of the statement “The U.S. is becoming a more and more dangerous place,” the results would likely look different — liberals, thinking of gun violence, may appear very high in threat perception.Conservatives and liberals, Niemi continued,see different things as threats — the nature of the threat and how it happens to stir one’s moral values (and their associated emotions) is a better clue to why liberals and conservatives react differently. Unlike liberals, conservatives strongly endorse the binding moral values aimed at protecting groups and relationships. They judge transgressions involving personal and national betrayal, disobedience to authority, and disgusting or impure acts such as sexually or spiritually unchaste behavior as morally relevant and wrong.Underlying these differences are competing sets of liberal and conservative moral priorities, with liberals placing more stress than conservatives on caring, kindness, fairness and rights — known among scholars as “individualizing values” — while conservatives focus more on loyalty, hierarchy, deference to authority, sanctity and a higher standard of disgust, known as “binding values.”As a set, Niemi wrote, conservative binding values encompassthe values oriented around group preservation, are associated with judgments, decisions, and interpersonal orientations that sacrifice the welfare of individuals. For example, binding values are associated with Machiavellianism (e.g., status-seeking and lying, getting ahead by any means, 2013); victim derogation, blame, and beliefs that victims were causal contributors for a variety of harmful acts (2016, 2020); and a tendency to excuse transgressions of ingroup members with attributions to the situation rather than the person (2023).Niemi cited a paper she and Liane Young, a professor of psychology at Boston College, published in 2016, “When and Why We See Victims as Responsible: The Impact of Ideology on Attitudes Toward Victims,” which tested responses of men and women to descriptions of crimes including sexual assaults and robberies.Niemi and Young wrote:We measured moral values associated with unconditionally prohibiting harm (“individualizing values”) versus moral values associated with prohibiting behavior that destabilizes groups and relationships (“binding values”: loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity). Increased endorsement of binding values predicted increased ratings of victims as contaminated, increased blame and responsibility attributed to victims, increased perceptions of victims’ (versus perpetrators’) behaviors as contributing to the outcome, and decreased focus on perpetrators.In summary, Niemi wrote:Numerous factors potentially influence the evolution of liberalism and conservatism and other social-cultural differences, including geography, topography, catastrophic events, and subsistence styles. What happened to people ecologically affected social-political developments, including the content of the rules people made and how they enforced them. Just as ecological factors differing from region to region over the globe produced different cultural values, ecological factors differed throughout the U.S. historically and today, producing our regional and state-level dimensions of culture and political patterns.Not everybody buys this.Joshua Hartshorne, who is also a professor of psychology at Boston College, took issue with the binding versus individualizing values theory as an explanation for the tendency of conservatives to blame victims:I would guess that the reason conservatives are more likely to blame the victim has less to do with binding values and more to do with the just-world bias (the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, therefore if a bad thing happened to you, you must be a bad person).Belief in a just world, Hartshorne argued, is crucial for those seeking to protect the status quo:It seems psychologically necessary for anyone who wants to advocate for keeping things the way they are that the haves should keep on having, and the have-nots have got as much as they deserve. I don’t see how you could advocate for such a position while simultaneously viewing yourself as moral (and almost everyone believes that they themselves are moral) without also believing in the just world. Conversely, if you generally believe the world is not just, and you view yourself as a moral person, then you are likely to feel like you have an obligation to change things.I asked Lene Aaroe, a political scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark, why the contemporary American political system is as polarized as it is now, given that the liberal-conservative schism is longstanding. What has happened to produce such intense hostility between left and right?Aaroe replied by email:There is variation across countries in hostility between left and right. The United States is a particularly polarized case which calls for a contextual explanation. For example, my own country, Denmark, has a multiparty system and now for the first time since 1978-79 has a coalitional government which includes both the main party on the political left and the party on the political right. A central explanation typically offered for the current situation in American politics is that partisanship and political ideology have developed into strong social identities where the mass public is increasingly sorted — along social, partisan, and ideological lines.I then asked Aaroe why surveys find that conservatives are happier than liberals. “Some research,” she replied, “suggests that experiences of inequality constitute a larger psychological burden to liberals because it is more difficult for liberals to rationalize inequality as a phenomenon with positive consequences.”Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, elaborated in an email on the link between conservatism and happiness:It’s a combination of factors. Conservatives are likelier to be married, patriotic, and religious, all of which make people happier. They may be less aggrieved by the status quo, whereas liberals take on society’s problems as part of their own personal burdens. Liberals also place politics closer to their identity and striving for meaning and purpose, which is a recipe for frustration.At the same time, Pinker continued,Some features of the woke faction of liberalism may make people unhappier: as Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have suggested, wokeism is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in reverse, urging upon people maladaptive mental habits such as catastrophizing, feeling like a victim of forces beyond one’s control, prioritizing emotions of hurt and anger over rational analysis, and dividing the world into allies and villains.Why, I asked Pinker, would liberals and conservatives react differently — often very differently — to messages that highlight threat?“It’s difficult to pin down the psychological underpinnings of liberals and conservatives,” he said,because a predominantly liberal social science establishment tends to analyze conservatism as a kind of pathology and apply a double standard to the characterizations. It may be liberals (or at least the social-justice wing) who are more sensitive to threats, such as white supremacy, climate change, and patriarchy; who may be likelier to moralize, seeing racism and transphobia in messages that others perceive as neutral; and being likelier to surrender to emotions like “harm” and “hurt.”While liberals and conservatives, guided by different sets of moral values, may make agreement on specific policies difficult, that does not necessarily preclude consensus.Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford, agreed that research “consistently finds differences in the moral values endorsed by liberals and conservatives,” but, he argued in an email, there are ways to persuade conservatives to support liberal initiatives and to persuade liberals to back conservative proposals:While liberals tend to be more concerned with protecting vulnerable groups from harm and more concerned with equality and social justice than conservatives, conservatives tend to be more concerned with moral issues like group loyalty, respect for authority, purity and religious sanctity than liberals are. Because of these different moral commitments, we find that liberals and conservatives can be persuaded by quite different moral arguments. For example, we find that conservatives are more persuaded by a same-sex marriage appeal articulated in terms of group loyalty and patriotism, rather than equality and social justice.In a 2015 paper, “From Gulf to Bridge: When Do Moral Arguments Facilitate Political Influence?” Willer and Matthew Feinberg, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto, contend that “political arguments reframed to appeal to the moral values of those holding the opposing political position are typically more effective. We find support for these claims across six studies involving diverse political issues, including same-sex marriage, universal health care, military spending, and adopting English as the nation’s official language.”In one test of persuadability on the right, Feinberg and Willer assigned some conservatives to read an editorial supporting universal health care as a matter of “fairness (health coverage is a basic human right)” or to read an editorial supporting health care as a matter of “purity (uninsured people means more unclean, infected, and diseased Americans).”Conservatives who read the purity argument were much more supportive of health care than those who read the fairness case.Conversely, in a test of liberals, Feinberg and Willer measured support for maintaining high levels of military spending, with respondents reading either an editorial making the case “in terms of fairness (through the military, the disadvantaged can achieve equal standing and overcome the challenges of poverty and inequality)” or an editorial citing “a combination of loyalty and authority (the military unifies us and ensures that the United States is the greatest nation in the world).”Liberals who read the fairness argument were substantially more supportive of military spending than those who read the loyalty and authority argument.Willer is the co-author of a separate 2020 paper that focuses on a concept the authors call “neural polarization.”In “Conservative and Liberal Attitudes Drive Polarized Neural Responses to Political Content,” Willer, Yuan Chang Leong of the University of Chicago, Janice Chen of Johns Hopkins and Jamil Zaki of Stanford address the question of how partisan biases are encoded in the brain:Partisan biases in processing political information contribute to rising divisions in society. How do such biases arise in the brain? We measured the neural activity of participants watching videos related to immigration policy. Despite watching the same videos, conservative and liberal participants exhibited divergent neural responses. This “neural polarization” between groups occurred in a brain area associated with the interpretation of narrative content and intensified in response to language associated with risk, emotion, and morality. Furthermore, polarized neural responses predicted attitude change in response to the videos.The four authors argue that their “findings suggest that biased processing in the brain drives divergent interpretations of political information and subsequent attitude polarization.” These results, they continue, “shed light on the psychological and neural underpinnings of how identical information is interpreted differently by conservatives and liberals.”The authors used neural imaging to follow changes in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (known as DMPFC) as conservatives and liberals watched videos presenting strong positions, left and right, on immigration.“For each video,” they write,participants with DMPFC activity time courses more similar to that of conservative-leaning participants became more likely to support the conservative position. Conversely, those with DMPFC activity time courses more similar to that of liberal-leaning participants became more likely to support the liberal position. These results suggest that divergent interpretations of the same information are associated with increased attitude polarization. Together, our findings describe a neural basis for partisan biases in processing political information and their effects on attitude change.Describe their neuroimaging method, the authors point out that theysearched for evidence of “neural polarization” activity in the brain that diverges between people who hold liberal versus conservative political attitudes. Neural polarization was observed in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a brain region associated with the interpretation of narrative content.The question is whether the political polarization that we are witnessing now proves to be a core, encoded aspect of the human mind, difficult to overcome — as Leong, Chen, Zaki and Willer suggest — or whether, with our increased knowledge of the neural basis of partisan and other biases, we will find more effective ways to manage these most dangerous of human predispositions.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Chris Christie, Putting Out Feelers for a 2024 Run, Takes Aim at Trump

    A speech in New Hampshire looks back on 2016 and ahead to another potential campaign — one that would have to start from square one.GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — Chris Christie wants a New Hampshire do-over.That was the overriding message on Monday night during a visit that Mr. Christie, a 2016 presidential candidate, made to the state, a testing-the-2024-waters trip in which he sharply criticized Donald J. Trump and waxed nostalgic for his own short-lived primary campaign seven years ago.Mr. Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who is mostly an afterthought so far in polling of a potential 2024 field, evoked many moments of 2016 at the town-hall-style event. Both he and audience members revisited his last-place finish in the New Hampshire primary that year, his leaving the race and endorsing Mr. Trump, and his eager support for the former president right through the 2020 election.Mr. Christie said that support abruptly ended on election night in 2020 when Mr. Trump signaled his intent to subvert the democratic results. Ever since, he said, Republicans have been dragged into “a sinkhole of anger and retribution” by the former president.“You know what Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago?” Mr. Christie said. “‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what, everybody? No thanks.”Asked by an audience member for his favorite New Hampshire memory from 2016, Mr. Christie recalled a debate when he attacked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for robotic responses; at the time, many observers said he had dealt a perilous blow to Mr. Rubio. Mr. Christie invited the audience to imagine him in the same role now against Mr. Trump in a hypothetical debate.“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco,” he said.Yet for all that Mr. Christie sounded ready to enter the fray, there are unanswered questions. Unlike some other potential candidates, he has no campaign team in waiting. He has spoken to heavyweight donors at Republican retreats in Texas and Georgia, but he is not raising money because there is no campaign to give to.Most crucial is the question of whether there is a lane in the Republican primary contest for such an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump — who has the avid support of about one in three primary voters. No other potential Trump rival in his party has wielded such a sharp knife as Mr. Christie.He blamed Mr. Trump’s extreme divisiveness and vindictive style, along with his embrace of election falsehoods, for Republican losses in three straight cycles: the House majority in 2018, the White House in 2020 and key Senate and governors’ races in 2022. “Particularly suburban women abandoned” Mr. Trump “because they had enough,” Mr. Christie said. It is naïve, he added, to “think they’re coming back for more in 2024.”Ray Washburne, who was Mr. Christie’s 2016 finance chairman, said the former governor “wants for sure” to run again. The challenge, he added, is clear: “What lane does he take? Being total anti-Trump loses a base of 35 percent.”A longtime adviser to Mr. Christie, Maria Comella, who accompanied him to New Hampshire, said the notion of lanes in a primary — in which candidates appeal to one portion of an electorate defined by demographics and ideology — was antiquated..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“The idea that at some point there has to be a pathway or a lane, and it was this very calculated structure and everyone fit into one and if you didn’t there wasn’t a viable path — I think it’s as if we’re back 20 years in a campaign cycle,” she said.Mr. Christie has said he will decide on his plans by mid-May.Besides Mr. Trump, he lashed Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, for downplaying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for saying the United States should not get into a “proxy war” with China.“Someone please place a wake-up call to Tallahassee,” Mr. Christie said.Citing Chinese-made fentanyl that is “killing 100,000 Americans a year,” and China’s close ties with Russia, Mr. Christie said the Florida governor was “naïve” to say that he wanted to avoid a proxy war with China. “We’re in one, and now the question is, Who’s going to win?” he said.The event on Monday took place at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, a venerable campaign destination whose walls are hung with pictures of Ronald Reagan on a snowmobile and campaign posters for Jimmy Carter and dozens of others.The audience was at best a minority slice of the Republican voting base. There were people who expressed nostalgia for John Kasich, the former center-right Ohio governor who came in second to Mr. Trump in the state in 2016 and then quickly faded. There were also independents and Democrats, including some who knew Mr. Christie best as the house conservative on ABC News political shows. They seemed interested to hear a Republican criticize one of their own. There were also fallen-away Trump loyalists.Ruth Dabrowski, who said she voted for Mr. Trump in both of his presidential bids, was one. She said she would abandon the party if he was the 2024 nominee. “Jan. 6 did it for me,” she said. “I washed my hands and said that was it.”Ms. Dabrowski, a retiree from Goffstown, said she wasn’t sure whether Mr. Christie could win much support in a Republican primary. “If he does as well as he did tonight — maybe,” she said.The first question to Mr. Christie came from Saul Shriber, who asked why he hadn’t attacked Mr. Trump in that 2016 debate instead of Mr. Rubio. Mr. Christie answered that it had been a strategic mistake by all of the Republican candidates that year, none of whom thought Mr. Trump could win, until he did.Mr. Shriber, a retired teacher from Chester, N.H., said he could support Mr. Christie in the primary as a foil to Mr. Trump.“If he’s a man of truth like he’s saying, then I can forgive and forget” 2016, he said. “But he’d better not disappoint me again.” More

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    Former National Enquirer Publisher Testifies Before Grand Jury in Trump Case

    The grand jury investigating a hush-money case against the former president met again on Monday, but the timing of any potential indictment remained unclear.The Manhattan grand jury weighing evidence about Donald J. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star heard testimony on Monday from a crucial witness, but there was no sign an indictment had been filed, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, also testified in January. Since the grand jury was impaneled early this year by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, it has heard from at least nine witnesses — including Mr. Pecker, who has now appeared twice — and is expected to vote on an indictment soon.It is unclear whether the grand jury took any action on Monday, but one of the people with knowledge of the matter said it had not voted on an indictment. Grand juries operate in secret, leaving the timing of indictments something of a mystery.Mr. Pecker was a key player in the hush-money episode. He and the tabloid’s top editor helped broker the deal between the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time.Ever since Mr. Trump predicted his arrest a little more than a week ago, all eyes have turned to the grand jury.And while the grand jurors could vote to indict the former president as soon as this week — in what would be the culmination of a nearly five-year investigation — the exact timing is subject to the quirks of the grand jury process in Manhattan, which include scheduling conflicts and other potential interruptions.This particular grand jury meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, though it typically has not heard evidence related to the Trump investigation on Thursdays. The panel does not have to meet on each of those days, but only convenes when Mr. Bragg’s office summons the jurors.The timing of an indictment might also depend on the jurors’ availability. Sixteen of the 23 grand jurors must be present to conduct any business (and a majority must vote to indict for the case to go forward). For the prosecutors to seek a vote to indict, the jurors in attendance that day must previously have heard all key witness testimony.Members of the media gathered outside the court building in Lower Manhattan on Monday afternoon.Anna Watts for The New York TimesThe prospect of an indictment has raised a number of questions about the contours of the potential case facing Mr. Trump, who would become the first former American president to be indicted.Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors are focused on the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, who agreed to keep quiet about her story of an affair with Mr. Trump in exchange for the payoff. Mr. Cohen made the payment during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.In recent weeks, Mr. Bragg’s office signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the former president could face criminal charges by offering him the chance to testify before the grand jury, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is near; it would be unusual for prosecutors to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in front of the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump declined the offer.Prosecutors have now questioned almost every major player in the hush-money episode, again suggesting that the district attorney’s presentation is nearing an end.Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing — as well as any sexual encounter with Ms. Daniels — and unleased a series of escalating attacks on Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump has referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt” and called Mr. Bragg, who is Black and a Democrat, a “racist” and an “animal.”In a post this month on his social network Truth Social, Mr. Trump declared, without any direct knowledge, that his arrest was imminent, calling on his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” — rhetoric reminiscent of his posts in the lead-up to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony was unclear, but it is not unusual for a witness to be called before a grand jury a second time, and he could have provided valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign.For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”Mr. Pecker didn’t bite. Instead, he and the tabloid’s editor, Dylan Howard, decided that Mr. Cohen would have to deal with Ms. Daniels’s team directly.And when Mr. Cohen was slow to pay, Mr. Howard pressed him to get the deal done, to prevent Ms. Daniels from revealing their discussions about suppressing her story. “We have to coordinate something,” Mr. Howard texted Mr. Cohen in late October 2016, “or it could look awfully bad for everyone.”Two days later, Mr. Cohen transferred the $130,000 to an account held by Ms. Daniels’s attorney.Sean Piccoli More