Top House, Senate Republicans outraged about Trump indictment: ‘A dark day in American history’

Top Republican lawmakers reacted with outrage to the unprecedented indictment of former president Donald Trump on Thursday as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s years-long investigation. 

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has been investigating Trump for hush money payments made leading up to the 2016 presidential election. 

TRUMP INDICTED AFTER MANHATTAN DA PROBE FOR HUSH MONEY PAYMENTS

“Outrageous,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted on Thursday. 

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital in a statement, “The unprecedented election interference from corrupt Socialist District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a political witch-hunt and a dark day for America. The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to persecute Joe Biden’s chief political opponent ahead of the 2024 presidential election to suppress the will and voice of the American people.

“Tens of millions of patriotic Americans have never been so energized to exercise their constitutional rights to peacefully organize and VOTE at the ballot box to save our great republic by electing President Donald J. Trump in 2024,” she said. 

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., tweeted on Thursday: “Today’s political indictment of Former President Trump is a dark day in American history and a threat to our Republic by Alvin Bragg and the Democratic Party machine. It’s unfathomable to me that this could happen in America. This is political persecution that must not stand!”

Bragg has been investigating the $130,000 hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 payment made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Fox News Digital has also learned. 

Hush money payments made to both McDougal and Daniels were revealed and reported by Fox News in 2018. Those payments had been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York and by the Federal Election Commission. 

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Stormy Daniels payment in 2019, even as Cohen implicated him as part of his plea deal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing with regard to the payments made to Daniels and McDougal, and has repeatedly said the payments were “not a campaign violation,” but rather a “simple private transaction.” 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.