Former President Donald Trump has no plans to testify in a New York grand jury investigation, his attorney Joe Tacopina said on Monday.
The investigation is into Trump's alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Tacopina, who appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, said that his client has "no plans on participating" in the Manhattan grand jury. He also shared that Trump lawyer Susan Necheles has been in talks with prosecutors.
A source had said that prosecutors have invited Trump to face the grand jury who are investigating his alleged role in the payment and the cover-up.
It indicates that a decision on charging Trump may come soon, reported CNN.
As he prepared to testify before the grand jury, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told reporters in lower Manhattan on Monday that his goal is to "tell the truth."
Meanwhile, Tacopina is calling on the New York City Department of Investigation, which is the city's inspector general, to probe the "weaponization" of the Manhattan district attorney's office.
The lawyer said that people are "distorting laws to try and bag" Trump, who launched a 2024 presidential bid in November. He wonders if it's because "he's leading in the polls."
He thinks that the "prosecutor and this prosecutor's office has made an agenda." He said that they have "scoured his personal life and business life for seven years to try to find something."
He was also asked whether Trump authorized the $130,000 payment made to Daniels just days before the 2016 Presidential election. Tacopina said that it's "not directly related."
He noted that let's assume that he did, for this argument, and that "this was a plain extortion." He shared that Trump has "vehemently denied this affair" with Daniels.
But the lawyer said that Trump had to pay money because there was going to be an "allegation that was going to be publicly embarrassing to him, regardless of the campaign."
The attorney later added there is "no nexus to any extortion payment to being a campaign contribution."
NBC News reported that Trump called the investigation a "scam, injustice, mockery, and complete and total weaponization of law enforcement in order to affect a Presidential Election!"
As for the prosecutors, they are weighing whether to charge him with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how they reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Cohen. The lawyer said that he advanced the money to Daniels.
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