By Jacqueline Thomsen

(Reuters) -Representing Donald Trump, who is now under indictment in New York, is no easy job. Just ask the former president himself.

“I say sometimes to a lawyer, ‘Are you sure you want to represent me? I think you’re making a mistake. What do you need it for?'” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday, discussing the legal troubles some of his own attorneys have faced.

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on Thursday following a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, making him the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges even as he makes another run for the White House.

Attorneys Susan Necheles, Joe Tacopina and Chad Seigel are set to defend Trump in the case. Necheles and Tacopina, both former Brooklyn prosecutors, said Thursday that they would “vigorously fight” the charges.

Trump has cycled through private lawyers ever since he took office as president in 2016, through congressional investigations, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference, his own false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

One of his past lawyers, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over the Daniels payment and served three years in prison and under home confinement. He is expected to be a key witness in the New York case.

Along the way, Trump has built a reputation for demanding loyalty from his attorneys and rejecting advice that clashes with his own brash style.

“He wants a lawyer who is completely loyal to him and will do what he tells them,” said Ty Cobb, who managed the White House’s response to Mueller’s probe for Trump before being replaced in 2018.

Trump’s long list of past attorneys includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who oversaw Trump’s post-2020 election litigation. His New York law license was suspended in 2021 after a court said he made “demonstrably false and misleading” election fraud claims.

Tacopina, a sharp-suited frequent cable news commenter who is accustomed to litigating in the spotlight of New York’s tabloids, has represented rapper Meek Mill, former Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez and Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle. The attorney told Reuters before the indictment that he is unafraid of controversial cases and that he and Trump have a relationship of “mutual respect.”

Tacopina is also defending Trump in a defamation lawsuit from writer E. Jean Carroll over Trump’s denial of Carroll’s claim that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.

Necheles, a onetime lawyer for late Genovese crime family underboss Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, defended the Trump Organization in a criminal trial last year in which the company was convicted of a scheme to defraud tax authorities.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Jonathan Oatis)

(Reuters) -New York prosecutors took a historic step on Thursday by filing criminal charges against Donald Trump, the first time this has happened to a former U.S. president.

The decision by the Manhattan District Attorney to charge Trump for hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, during his 2016 campaign, is just one of the many probes facing the Republican as he makes another run at the White House.

GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBE

A prosecutor in the state of Georgia is investigating Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in that state.

The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.

Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney and a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges against Trump or anyone else, told a judge on Jan. 24 that a special grand jury had completed its investigation task and that decisions were “imminent.”

Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.

Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionally protected free speech.

U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK

The U.S. Justice Department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election and his retention of highly classified documents after departing the White House in 2021.

Both investigations are being overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent. Trump has accused the FBI, without evidence, of launching the probes as political retribution.

A special House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol urged the Justice Department to charge Trump with corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or aiding an insurrection.

Only the Justice Department can decide whether to charge Trump, who has called the Democratic-led panel’s investigation a politically motivated sham.

MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDS

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland also appointed Smith to investigate whether Trump improperly retained classified records at his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate after he left office in 2021 and then tried to obstruct a federal investigation.

Garland also appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to investigate the removal of classified records in President Joe Biden’s possession dating to his time as vice president.

It is unlawful to willfully remove or retain classified material.

In Trump’s case, the FBI seized 13,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago in an Aug. 8 search. About 100 documents were marked classified; some were designated top secret, the highest level of classification.

Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.

NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL LAWSUIT

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump and his Trump Organization last September for fraud.

James said her office found more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations between 2011 and 2021, and that Trump inflated his net worth by billions of dollars.

The attorney general said the scheme was intended to help Trump obtain lower interest rates on loans and better insurance coverage.

She also said her probe uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and referred it to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service.

The civil lawsuit seeks to permanently bar Trump and three of his adult children from running companies in New York state, and recoup at least $250 million obtained through fraud.

Trump, a Republican, has called James’ lawsuit a witch hunt, and the defendants have called the claims meritless. James is a Democrat.

A New York judge ordered an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization before the scheduled October 2023 trial.

DEFAMATION LAWSUITS

E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, has filed two lawsuits accusing Trump of defaming her by denying he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.

Carroll first sued Trump after he told a reporter at the White House in 2019 that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she lied to drum up sales for her memoir.

The second lawsuit arose from an October 2022 social media post where Trump called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam.”

That lawsuit includes a battery claim under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave adults a one-year window to sue their alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have expired.

Trump and Carroll are awaiting a decision from a Washington, D.C., appeals court on whether, under local law, Trump should be immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit.

The second lawsuit could go to trial on April 25, after a U.S. judge in January called Trump’s bid to dismiss it “absurd.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Luc Cohen, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Jonathan Stempel and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Howard Goller, Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) -Donald Trump was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office following an investigation related to hush money payments to a porn star who has said she had a sexual relationship with him, a law enforcement source said, becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges.

Below is a timeline of events leading up to the charges:

JANUARY 2018

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 to prevent her from discussing a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006.

Trump has consistently denied having an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

FEBRUARY 2018

Michael Cohen, a former private lawyer and fixer for Trump, says he paid Daniels using his own money and was not directed by Trump’s company or campaign to make the payment. He said Trump never reimbursed him for the payment.

Cohen would later contradict both statements under oath, stating Trump did in fact direct him to make the payment and reimbursed him.

FEBRUARY 2018

The New Yorker magazine reports that Trump had an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal from 2006 to 2007. The magazine said American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, paid McDougal $150,000 shortly after Trump became the Republican nominee for president in 2016 for exclusive rights to her story.

The National Enquirer never published the story.

APRIL 2018

Trump, when asked by reporters if he knew about the payment to Daniels, responded, “No.” Asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said, “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen.”

MAY 2018 In an ethics disclosure, Trump acknowledges reimbursing Cohen for the $130,000 paid for Daniels.

JULY 2018

Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal lawyers at the time, says Cohen recorded a conversation with Trump two months before the 2016 election in which the two discussed a potential payment to McDougal. Trump denies wrongdoing and calls Cohen’s tape “perhaps illegal.”

AUGUST 2018

Cohen pleads guilty to criminal charges in Manhattan federal court, including campaign finance violations over the hush money payments. He testified that Trump directed him to make the payments “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.”

In their indictment of Cohen, prosecutors say a candidate for federal office referred to as “Individual-1” arranged the payments. Trump was not charged with a crime. Geoffrey Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan at the time, later confirmed that Trump was Individual-1.

DECEMBER 2018

Trump, on Twitter, calls the hush money payments a “simple private transaction.” In an interview with Reuters, he says the payment to Daniels “wasn’t a campaign contribution” and “there was no violation based on what we did.”

AUGUST 2019

Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan District Attorney at the time, issues a subpoena to the Trump Organization – Trump’s family real estate company – for records of hush money payments.

JULY 2021

Vance’s office indicts the Trump Organization and its top financial executive on tax fraud charges. Trump himself is not charged with a crime, and the indictment contains no references to hush money payments.

FEBRUARY 2022

Two top prosecutors leading the probe into Trump’s business practices resign. One of the prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, later said his resignation came after Alvin Bragg – who replaced Vance as District Attorney – indicated to him he had doubts about pursuing a case against Trump.

Bragg’s office says the investigation is ongoing.

DECEMBER 2022

The Trump Organization is found guilty of tax fraud after a trial in New York state court in Manhattan.

JANUARY 2023

Bragg’s office begins presenting evidence about Trump’s alleged role in the 2016 hush money payments to a grand jury.

MARCH 2023

Manhattan prosecutors invite Trump to testify before the grand jury, which legal experts say is a sign an indictment could come soon. Cohen testifies before the grand jury.

MARCH 18, 2023

Trump says on his social media platform Truth Social that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday (March 21) and calls on his supporters to protest. A spokesperson for Trump said the former president had not been notified of any arrest.

MARCH 23, 2023

Bragg’s office says Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested, and tells Republican congressmen seeking communications, documents and testimony about the probe that they were interfering with an ongoing investigation.

MARCH 24, 2023

Trump warns of potential “death and destruction” if he is charged with a crime.

MARCH 30, 2023

A law enforcement source and U.S. media reports say Trump is indicted.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Alistair Bell)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Social Security system’s main trust fund’s reserves will be depleted in 2033, one year earlier than estimated last year, while Medicare’s finances have improved slightly, reports from the programs’ trustees showed on Friday.

The Medicare Hospital Trust Fund reserves are now expected to be depleted in 2031 compared to an estimate of 2028 made last year, due in part to new estimates showing higher revenue data.

Both the Social Security and Medicare trustees reports said that the programs’ finances are unsustainable in the long term, and Biden administration officials urged Congress to adopt President Joe Biden’s proposal to raise Medicare taxes on wealthy Americans.

Although the Social Security Disability Trust Fund is projected to be able to pay full benefits through 2097, the final year in the 75-year projection period, the combined Social Security funds would be only able to pay 80% of scheduled benefits after 2034, according to the trustees report.

The worsened financial picture for Social Security is due largely to reductions in projected economic output and productivity estimates over the forecast window that are about 3% lower than last year’s estimates, partly reflecting the effects of inflation.

Driving the three-year delay in the projected Medicare Hospital Trust Fund depletion date were projections of lower health care spending in the post-pandemic era.

A Biden administration official said this is partly because more people with significant health problems that required care died prematurely during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Biden administration official said. Current patients have fewer health problems, a trend that is expected for a few years, the official added.

Other factors for reduced projected cost include more joint-replacement surgeries being shifted to an outpatient basis, and slightly higher revenues, the official said.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

By Karen Freifeld, Luc Cohen and Tyler Clifford

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump is due to be fingerprinted and photographed in a New York courthouse next week as he becomes the first ex-president to face criminal charges, in a case involving a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s expected appearance before a judge in Manhattan on Tuesday as the Republican mounts a comeback bid for the presidency could further inflame divisions across the country.

For nearly two weeks, Trump has been using the legal threats he confronts to raise money and rally supporters as he seeks his party’s nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden next year.

The first U.S. president to try to overthrow an election defeat, inspiring the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, has signaled he will continue to campaign even as he faces charges.

“I am not afraid of what’s to come,” he said in a fundraising email on Friday.

Those specific charges have not yet been made public as the indictment remains under seal, but CNN reported on Thursday that Trump faced more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

Susan Necheles, a Trump attorney, told Reuters the former president will plead not guilty.

Another Trump lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said Trump will not have to wear handcuffs at his court appearance and will likely be released without having to post bail.

“He’s ready to fight. He’s gearing up,” Tacopina told Reuters in a phone interview.

Trump, 76, said on Thursday that he was “completely innocent” and accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Democrat who led the investigation, of trying to damage his electoral chances.

PARTISAN BRAWL

Trump’s claims of political interference have been echoed by many of his fellow Republicans and his potential rivals in the 2024 race.

Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, said the charges send a “terrible message” to the world about U.S. justice.

“I’m very troubled by it,” Pence, a possible 2024 candidate, said at a forum in Washington.

Senior Republicans in the House of Representatives have vowed to investigate Bragg and demanded he hand over documents and other confidential material from the investigation.

Bragg said on Friday that Congress does not have authority to interfere with the case and accused the lawmakers of escalating political tensions. Bragg’s office has been the target of bomb threats in recent weeks.

“You and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” Bragg wrote in a letter to Republican lawmakers.

Biden declined to comment on Friday as he left the White House for a trip to storm-ravaged Mississippi.

Trump alleges there are political motivations behind all four criminal investigations he is known to face – including federal probes into his retention of classified documents and attempts to overturn his election defeat, and a separate Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn his loss in that state.

He has also accused Bragg, who is Black, of racial bias.

SECURITY HIGH

Officials have stepped up security around the courthouse since Trump on March 18 called on his supporters to protest any arrest. A law enforcement source said on Friday that police would close streets around the courthouse ahead of Tuesday’s expected appearance.

The Manhattan charges will likely be unsealed by a judge in the coming days and Trump will have to travel there to be photographed, fingerprinted and appear in court, which is expected on Tuesday. Necheles, the Trump lawyer, she did not expect charges to be unsealed until that day.

Any potential trial is still at least more than a year away, legal experts said, meaning it could occur during or after the presidential campaign.

Trump appealed earlier this month for nationwide protests, recalling his charged rhetoric ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, and warned last week of potential “death & destruction” if he were charged.

“It’s politics. I think they’re just dying to find a way to keep him from being eligible for running for reelection,” Mark Funk, 58, said at a beer garden in Houston.

Some Republican voters might tire of the drama.

Some 44% of Republicans said Trump should drop out of the race if he is indicted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week.

HAS ESCAPED LEGAL PERIL BEFORE

Trump has escaped legal peril numerous times since the 1970s, when he joined his family’s real estate business.

In the White House, he weathered two attempts by Congress to remove him from office, over the U.S. Capitol assault and a probe into his campaign’s contacts with Russia in 2016.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office prosecuted Trump’s business on tax-fraud charges last year, leading to a $1.61 million criminal penalty, but Trump himself was not charged.

The presiding judge in that case, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, is expected to oversee the Daniels case as well, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Though it is unclear what specific charges Trump will face, some legal experts have said Bragg might have to rely on untested legal theories to argue that Trump falsified business records to cover up other crimes, such as violating federal campaign-finance law.

Ahead of the indictment, the grand jury heard months of evidence about an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 campaign.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

The former president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has said he coordinated with Trump on the payments to Daniels and to a second woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also said she had a sexual relationship with him.

Trump has denied having affairs with either woman and initially disputed knowing anything about the payments. He later acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for what he called a “simple private transaction.”

Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign-finance violation in 2018 and served more than a year in prison. Federal prosecutors said he acted at Trump’s direction.

(Additional reporting by Tim Reid, Doina Chiacu and Katherine Jackson; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Costas Pitas; Editing by Scott Malone, Mark Heinrich, Frank Jack Daniel, Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis)

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump will not be handcuffed when he surrenders next week in New York to face criminal charges, his defense lawyer Joe Tacopina said on Friday.

Susan Necheles, another Trump attorney, said the former president will plead not guilty.

Tacopina said, while Trump was not expected to be cuffed, he likely would be fingerprinted and undergo other routine protocols when going to court on Tuesday to face charges in an indictment handed down by a grand jury probing a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“I don’t know how all this is going to go down,” Tacopina cautioned in an interview. “There’s no textbook to see how you arraign a former president of the United States in criminal court.”

Necheles declined to comment on details of the surrender.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tacopina said Trump and his defense team were surprised by news of the indictment.

“Initially we were all shocked. Didn’t believe they were actually going to go through with this because there’s no crime here,” Tacopina said.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Howard Goller)

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s indictment has thrust into the spotlight Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor whose office convinced a New York grand jury to bring the first criminal charges ever against a former U.S. president.

Bragg, 49, took office in January 2022, the first Black person elected Manhattan District Attorney. Raised in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, Bragg decided to go to law school, he said, after having a gun pulled on him six times growing up, three of the times by police.

The charges against Trump, which have yet to be disclosed, emerged from an investigation into his role in a payment before the 2016 election to buy porn star to Stormy Daniels’ silence about a sexual liaison she says she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump denies having an affair.

A Republican, Trump has called the probe that led to his indictment politically motivated and posted a series of personal attacks against Bragg, a Democrat. The posts included a since-deleted photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg.

Trump’s lawyer on Friday said the picture was not a threat.

A spokesperson for Bragg has said his office would not be “intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process” and would not let “baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.”

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bragg served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he handled fraud and money laundering cases. He later joined the New York state attorney general’s office, where he oversaw a lawsuit that forced Trump’s namesake foundation to dissolve.

In 2021, Bragg won a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination to succeed Cyrus Vance as Manhattan District Attorney.

The primary race focused largely on reforming the criminal justice system by jailing fewer people and addressing racial bias, as well as on investigating Trump.

“I’ve done this type of work under this type of scrutiny,” Bragg said during the campaign, referring to the case against the Trump Foundation.

He cruised to victory in the general election in heavily liberal Manhattan.

Late last year, Bragg’s office won a conviction of the Trump Organization on charges of orchestrating a 15-year tax fraud, his office’s biggest trial victory to date. Trump personally was not charged in the case.

In January this year, Bragg’s office began presenting evidence to the grand jury about the payment to Daniels, the porn star, reviving an investigation the district attorney’s office started and stopped so many times it has come to be known as a “zombie case” like the mythical character who returns from the dead.

Bragg came under criticism last year for declining to bring charges against Trump over his family real estate company’s business practices. Those charges had been authorized by his predecessor, but Bragg said the case was not ready.

He also faced scrutiny for a plan to refrain from prosecuting some minor offenses, to reduce pretrial detention and to limit sentence length. Bragg argued that “over-incarceration” had not improved public safety.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s indictment has thrust into the spotlight Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor whose office convinced a New York grand jury to bring the first criminal charges ever against a former U.S. president.

Bragg, 49, took office in January 2022, the first Black person elected Manhattan District Attorney. Raised in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, Bragg decided to go to law school, he said, after having a gun pulled on him six times growing up, three of the times by police.

The charges against Trump, which have yet to be disclosed, emerged from an investigation into his role in a payment before the 2016 election to buy porn star to Stormy Daniels’ silence about a sexual liaison she says she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump denies having an affair.

A Republican, Trump has called the probe that led to his indictment politically motivated and posted a series of personal attacks against Bragg, a Democrat. The posts included a since-deleted photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg.

Trump’s lawyer on Friday said the picture was not a threat.

A spokesperson for Bragg has said his office would not be “intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process” and would not let “baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.”

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bragg served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he handled fraud and money laundering cases. He later joined the New York state attorney general’s office, where he oversaw a lawsuit that forced Trump’s namesake foundation to dissolve.

In 2021, Bragg won a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination to succeed Cyrus Vance as Manhattan District Attorney.

The primary race focused largely on reforming the criminal justice system by jailing fewer people and addressing racial bias, as well as on investigating Trump.

“I’ve done this type of work under this type of scrutiny,” Bragg said during the campaign, referring to the case against the Trump Foundation.

He cruised to victory in the general election in heavily liberal Manhattan.

Late last year, Bragg’s office won a conviction of the Trump Organization on charges of orchestrating a 15-year tax fraud, his office’s biggest trial victory to date. Trump personally was not charged in the case.

In January this year, Bragg’s office began presenting evidence to the grand jury about the payment to Daniels, the porn star, reviving an investigation the district attorney’s office started and stopped so many times it has come to be known as a “zombie case” like the mythical character who returns from the dead.

Bragg came under criticism last year for declining to bring charges against Trump over his family real estate company’s business practices. Those charges had been authorized by his predecessor, but Bragg said the case was not ready.

He also faced scrutiny for a plan to refrain from prosecuting some minor offenses, to reduce pretrial detention and to limit sentence length. Bragg argued that “over-incarceration” had not improved public safety.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

By Tim Reid and Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump sends a “terrible message” to the world about American justice and will encourage dictators to abuse power, former Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday.

“There are dictators and authoritarians around the world that will point to that to justify their own abuse of their own so-called justice system,” Pence, Trump’s former vice president and a potential rival for the Republican Party’s 2024 White House nomination, said during an interview at the National Review’s Ideas Summit.

Trump is due to be fingerprinted and photographed in a New York courthouse next week as he becomes the first former president to face criminal charges, in a case involving a 2016 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump, who is mounting a comeback bid for the presidency he lost in the 2020 election, was indicted on Thursday in New York.

Pence has joined fellow Republicans and Trump’s other potential 2024 rivals in condemning the indictment, calling it an “outrage.”

(Reporting by Timothy Reid and Katharine Jackson; editing by Rami Ayyub and Jonathan Oatis)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department sued Norfolk Southern Corp seeking to ensure that the railroad pays the full cost of cleanup and any long-term effects of the derailment in Ohio of one of its freight trains in early February.

The lawsuit filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Ohio on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency seeks penalties and injunctive relief for the unlawful discharge of pollutants under the Clean Water Act and an order addressing liability for past and future costs.

The Norfolk-operated train derailment on Feb. 3 of 38 cars including 11 carrying hazardous materials in the village of East Palestine caused cars carrying toxic vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals to spill and catch fire.

“With this complaint, the Justice Department and the EPA are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday.

EPA in February issued an order requiring Norfolk Southern to develop plans to address contamination and pay EPA’s response costs.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the suit will help “ensure Norfolk Southern cleans up the mess they made and pays for the damage they have inflicted as we work to ensure this community can feel safe at home again.”

Norfolk Southern on Friday said in response to the lawsuit that it was focused on “cleaning up the site, assisting residents whose lives were impacted by the derailment, and investing in the future of East Palestine and the surrounding areas … we’ll keep working until we make it right.”

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw told lawmakers last week that the railroad is “committed” to addressing potential long-term health issues, home value impacts from the derailment and efforts to protect drinking water.

No deaths or injuries were reported after the incident but since the derailment, some of East Palestine’s 4,700 residents have reported ailments such as rashes and breathing difficulties, and some fear long-term health effects.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Mark Porter)