At about 8.30pm on Thursday night, Donald Trump donned a red MAGA cap and played an outdoor DJ set at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, according to a new report.
Mr Trump, who earlier broke the news of his own indictment in a Truth Social post, put on his favorite tunes by Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown on an iPad on the patio of Bedminster’s main building, sources told the New York Times on condition of anonymity.
The former president had received a call about 90 minutes earlier from one of his attorneys informing him he had been indicted while huddled with his close political advisers in an office near a poolside cottage at the Bedminster private golf club, according to the Times.
Mr Trump had been preparing for the indictment — his second within three months — to come. He immediately decided to go on the offensive.
In a Truth Social post at 7.21pm, Mr Trump broke the news in a dismissive three-part statement: “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax.”
Details of the charges were vague, but he revealed he had been summoned to appear at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday.
Cable news channels interrupted regular programming, flashing chyrons and hastily assembling expert panels, while social media went into meltdown.
Then just before 8pm, Mr Trump released a 4-minute video claiming the “boxes hoax,” was just like the “Russia hoax” and the “Mueller hoax”.
“This is what they do so well,” he said, standing in front of a painting of Theodore Roosevelt as the makeshift lighting shone brightly on his combover.
The video had been pre-taped in anticipation of the indictment, according to the Times.
“They can’t stop, because it’s election interference at the highest level,” Mr Trump continued.
“There’s never been anything like what’s happened. I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.”
A news truck was sent to Bedminster, and Mr Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty went on CNN within minutes to describe the former president’s frame of mind.
“He said: ‘This is just a sad day. I can’t believe I have been indicted’,” Mr Trusty told Kaitlin Collins.
“Those are kind of my — my summary words of what he had to say. But, at the same time, he immediately recognises the historic nature of this. This is crossing the Rubicon.”
At 7.45pm, his political campaign sent out a fundraising appeal claiming to supporters that they were “watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes”.
They had raked in $12m after Mr Trump’s previous indictment on hush money payments in New York, and knew they could take full advantage of the outrage generated by the fresh charges.
A television commercial, drafted in anticipation of the indictment, is due to be placed on cable news on Friday, the Times report claimed.
Mr Trump’s team quickly began urging his allies to issue statements condemning the indictment. Within minutes, Republicans were rushing to his defence.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called it a “dark day”, while House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan wrote: “God Bless President Trump”.
Using surrogates like Charlie Kirk, Mr Trump’s team also mounted a pressure campaign to convince his Republican opponents for the 2024 presidential nomination to support him.
“Every ‘Republican’ running for President should suspend their campaign and go to Miami as a show of support,” Mr Kirk, of Turning Point USA, tweeted.
“If you don’t, you are part of the problem. Either we have an opposition party or we don’t.”
Ron DeSantis, Mr Trump’s chief GOP rival, attacked prosecutors, tweeting: “Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?”
Vivek Ramaswamy, a longshot candidate, pledged to pardon Mr Trump on his first day in office.
Media outlets were soon reporting that the grand jury indictment would include seven separate federal counts understood to include conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements, and unlawful retention of national defence information.
Despite the choreographed reaction, Mr Trump had been caught off-guard by the swift timing of the indictment, according to the Times.
Rather than having his criminal defence attorneys around him, he was left to formulate his response with his political advisers.
After setting the news cycle alight, Mr Trump then retired to the outdoor dining area at Bedminster to play DJ, just as he had at Mar-a-Lago after his April indictment on hush money charges in Manhattan.
