Donald Trump indictment: former US president becomes first to face criminal charges – latest updates
Michael R Sisak for Associated Press has this account of how events unfolded towards the end of the day yesterday.
He reports that Donald Trump’s indictment was quietly brought to the clerk’s office at the Manhattan criminal courthouse just before closing time on Thursday.
A woman and two men in suits walked in past reporters who have been staking out the office for weeks, then turned a corner and disappeared through a door to a non-public area known as the indictment room.
Sisak states that the vibe in the room shifted, and then around the courthouse, too. The clerk’s office, normally a bustle of lawyers and paralegals seeking case files and submitting papers, people posting bail and court employees cracking jokes, grew quiet and tense.
Moments later, just before 5pm local time, when a reporter asked if there were any filings involving “People v Donald Trump” – her customary end-of-day question in recent days – a usually cheerful clerk sternly replied: “We have no information on that case. The office is closing. You have to leave.”
The reporters, from outlets including the Associated Press legal publication Law360, left the office and stood outside in the hallway, watching through glass doors as workers turned out the lights and the people who’d walked in a few minutes earlier worked in darkness inside filing the indictment.
“After visiting the clerk’s office for weeks, this was all very strange,” said Frank Runyeon, a reporter for Law360. “Very unusual and we knew something was up.”
As the people continued to work, and reporters peered in at what was going on, court officers came to the hallway and shooed the press away. That floor of the courthouse was now closed, they said.
The indictment remains under seal, its contents secret, likely until Trump is arraigned. But news of the indictment, voted on by a grand jury sitting in a court building across the street from the criminal courthouse, broke shortly afterwards.