Grand Jury Hearing Trump Evidence Will Not Meet Wednesday

NEW YORK — The Manhattan grand jury that has been hearing evidence about Donald Trump’s involvement with a hush-money payment to a porn star will not meet Wednesday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, suggesting that any indictment of the former president would come Thursday at the earliest.

Criminal charges against Trump have been hotly anticipated since at least Saturday, when the former president, with no direct knowledge, declared on his social media platform that he would be arrested Tuesday. But the grand jury, which meets in the afternoons, heard from a witness Monday until nearly 5 p.m., leaving little time for anything else.

The grand jury meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and may hear from at least one more witness before being asked to vote, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Because the proceeding is held in secret, it is unclear whether other witnesses could appear as well.

It is unclear why the grand jury was not meeting Wednesday, but the panel is not required to convene all three days each week, and scheduling conflicts and other interruptions are not unusual.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

The news of the canceled session was first reported by Insider.

While an indictment of Trump is not a certainty, prosecutors working for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have signaled that charges are likely. They have been scrutinizing Trump for the hush-money payment that was made by his former fixer, Michael Cohen, in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The timing of any potential indictment is unknown, and an arrest and arraignment — the criminal proceeding in which a defendant is formally charged — would not immediately follow. In order to indict Trump, Bragg’s prosecutors must ask the grand jury to vote whether to charge him. A majority of the 23 jurors must agree to do so.

Once witness testimony has concluded, prosecutors are expected to explain any charges they are seeking to the jurors before asking them to vote. With the grand jury not meeting Wednesday, the earliest that is likely to happen is Thursday afternoon.

The charges likely center on the way Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, handled reimbursing Cohen for the payment of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments, according to Cohen, who said Trump knew about the misleading records. (Trump’s lawyers deny that and have accused Bragg’s office of targeting the former president for political purposes.)

In New York, falsifying business records can be a crime, and Bragg’s office is likely to build the case around that charge, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .