BUFFALO, N.Y. — NBC News is reporting former President Donald Trump will surrender and be arraigned Tuesday after being indicted by a grand jury in New York City on Thursday.
It comes following an investigation into alleged hush money paid during the 2016 presidential campaign to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The indictment itself has remained sealed but NBC News has learned there may be as many as 30 counts of fraud-related charges.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Reaction has come in from our local congressional delegation on both sides of the aisle.
U.S. Representative Claudia Tenney, a Republican in the 24th District including Lockport, stated "Soros-backed District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s witch-hunt targeting President Donald Trump is a political persecution with purely malicious intent. Bragg has repeatedly allowed violent criminals to walk the streets, downgrading 52% of felony charges to misdemeanors. Yet now he has decided to spend precious taxpayer dollars and resources on this outrageous case against Donald Trump, and only after he announced he was running for president. Every American should be concerned about this gross abuse of power and the politicized two-tiered system of justice we now have in America. I once again call on Governor Kathy Hochul to act. Uphold the rule of law and remove Alvin Bragg from office for, among other things, his failure to enforce the law and his blatant politicization of the criminal justice system. ”
Erie County Republican Party Chairman Michael Kracker also said, "This sham indictment is a blatant abuse of power by a radically pro-criminal District Attorney. Rather than keep New Yorkers safe, Alvin Bragg is using his position to exact political vengeance against President Trump. If releasing violent criminals onto the streets of New York wasn’t enough cause for termination, this miscarriage of justice must be. Alvin Bragg should be fired immediately.”
U.S. Representative Brian Higgins, Democrat in the 26th District covering Buffalo and Niagara Falls, said simply, “In America, the law applies to everyone. The former President, like any American charged with a crime, will now have the opportunity to plead his case in the courts.”
Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner and U.S. Representative Nick Langworthy did not respond.
April 2016 brought Donald Trump and his supporters to a rally at Buffalo's then First Niagara Center with security concerns discussed back then, ironically like what we're seeing now for the NYPD as the grand jury indictment comes down from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
And despite New York's blue downstate Democratic image - Trump still has followers here according to UB Political Science Associate Professor Jacob Neiheisel.
He points out, "You're not gonna find a ton of it in Buffalo proper but in the outlying areas of Erie County , the rest of Western New York there is quite a bit of Trump support. I think one of the things we've seen recently is the nationalization of American politics makes such that a Trump supporter here is not terribly different from a Trump supporter in Ohio, Pennsylvania - some other place that we think of being more competitive politically."
Neiheisel says overall, "There are a number of Republicans who are thinking what Trump has been telling them, which is to say this is a witch hunt. This is politically motivated. I imagine there are a number of people on the other end of the political spectrum who are very much celebrating this event. And there's probably some number of people in the middle who occasionally pay attention to politics who are not entirely sure what to think. The research would suggest that scandals when they happen particularly people in the middle are going to react negatively."
Professor Neiheisel expects the Biden Administration to stay quiet on the indictment.
"The incentive for them is to decrease the extent to which this is seen as political and so if they can stay out of it I think they're going to do that," he said.
But he thinks Republicans may claim this is a motivated witch-hunt by District Attorney Bragg who has faced his own prosecution controversies. "Certainly in the court of public opinion Trump surrogates are going to be trumpeting absolute anything they can find that makes it look like this is a political kind of case and not a legal one."
But more legal issues are looming for presidential candidate Donald Trump. That would include the New York State Attorney General 's business fraud case against the Trump Organization which we are told may go to trial in October.
Neiheisel adds, "There's other potentially more serious cases kind of waiting in the wings likely in Georgia would be one place. And so I think he's going to be dealing with this for a while. And I'm not sure that he can go out there on the campaign trail, do what he's known for doing, and also deal with legal proceedings along the way."