Former vice president Mike Pence on Thursday called the indictment of Donald Trump an “outrage” as he dismissed the case against him as “political prosecution”.
“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” Mr Pence said on CNN.
“And it appears to millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution that’s driven by a prosecutor who literally ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president.”
Mr Trump has been indicted by a New York City grand jury on charges of falsifying business records stemming from payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to prevent her from revealing an affair he had with her before the 2016 election.
While Mr Pence acknowledged that “no one is above the law, including former presidents”, he maintained that his case was different.
The former vice president declined to say whether Mr Trump should drop out of the 2024 race if convicted, he added that there is “no reason for calling for people to be protesting” the indictment.
A source told The Independent that grand jurors voted to indict the ex-president at some point this week, and that indictment is currently under seal.
It was only filed with the New York Supreme Court late on Thursday, just before the court clerk’s office wrapped its business for the day.
Mr Trump is reportedly facing more than 30 counts related to business fraud, sources told CNN after the indictment became public.
Filing the indictment, which has been signed by the grand jury foreperson, with the clerk of court is what makes a criminal case official, but because it is currently under seal, it will remain so until it is unveiled at some point in the near future by district attorney Alvin Bragg.
The twice-impeached former president had signaled that he could face arrest by Mr Bragg’s office, which was still in the process of presenting evidence to a grand jury as recently as Monday. He previously said in a post on his Truth Social platform that he had expected to be arrested on 21 March, but that date came and went without an indictment being handed down from the grand jury.
Mr Bragg said in a statement on Thursday 30 March that his office has been in touch with Mr Trump’s attorneys over the former president’s surrender.
“This evening we contacted Mr Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan DA’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected,” Mr Bragg said.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have indicated that he will surrender to New York authorities early next week.
In the time between when he claimed he would be arrested and the announcement that the grand jury had, in fact, indicted him, the ex-president ramped-up increasingly unhinged rhetorical attacks on Mr Bragg, including at a 25 March rally in Waco, Texas.
During an airplane flight to the Texas rally, he told a group of reporters traveling with him that he believed Mr Bragg had “dropped the case” against him and called the entire matter “a fake case”.
But at an event later that evening, Mr Trump described the Manhattan prosecutor’s effort to hold him to account for alleged crimes as interference in next year’s presidential election.
“Prosecutorial misconduct is their new tool, and they’re willing to use it at levels never seen before in our country. We’ve had it, but we’ve never had it like this,” he said. “We must stop them and we must not allow them to go through another election where they have yet another tool in their tool kit”.
