这对唐纳德·特朗普的起诉标志着该国历史上前所未有的发展曾面临刑事指控。
历史学家说，自理查德·尼克松以来，还没有出现过真正的前景总司令被正式指控犯罪尽管尼克松被继任者杰拉尔德·福特赦免后避免了那种命运。
特朗普的纽约市大陪审团的起诉书周四，多个消息来源向美国广播公司证实了这一消息。虽然对他的指控尚不清楚，但他一直在接受曼哈顿地区检察官阿尔文·布拉格的调查关于付给成人电影女演员斯托米·丹尼尔斯的钱在特朗普2016年竞选总统期间，他试图阻止丹尼尔斯公开她声称与特朗普的婚外情。
特朗普否认有任何不当行为，称他正受到政治迫害，并坚称他从未与丹尼尔斯发生关系。
他为自己辩护他付给丹尼尔斯的13万美元和他的律师称之为敲诈。
起诉书——源于只是对特朗普的多项调查之一-在早期阶段出现2024年总统竞选随着特朗普第三次寻求共和党提名。
除了被起诉的不确定性特朗普复出竞选的插播广告法律的发展将他、司法系统，或许还有这个国家本身推入了未知的水域。
“在美国历史上，没有什么比这更遥远的了。我们最接近的是1974年的理查德·尼克松，他在面临众议院几乎肯定会弹劾的情况下辞职离开白宫，”美国广播公司新闻总统历史学家马克Updegrove说。
Updegrove说，唯一的另一个比较点是当时的副总统Aaron Burr在1804年的决斗中杀死了Alexander Hamilton，并在离任后被逮捕，审判并被判无罪。(几十年后，在另一件事情上，当时的总统尤利西斯·格兰特于1872年被捕与他的马车超速行驶有关。)
“特朗普的情况非常不同，”Updegrove说。
与最终在两党压力下被赶下台的尼克松不同，特朗普得到了保守派同僚的支持。
与尼克松不同，特朗普不希望从他的继任者民主党人乔·拜登那里获得总统赦免。
1974年9月，福特总统赦免了尼克松，这立即引发了争议，他在一次公众演讲中说，他的决定是为了结束内战水门事件及其掩盖的长期余波这件事搅乱了整个国家，导致了一系列的政治辞职或官员被指控。
在他的赦免演说中，福特称尼克松是一个“老朋友”，他已经“遭受了足够多的痛苦，并将继续遭受”像一把剑一样悬挂着的“严重指控和指责”
律师尼克·阿克曼在为水门事件特别检察官利昂·贾沃斯基工作时曾帮助调查尼克松，他告诉ABC新闻，他认为尼克松“本来可以被起诉”，但贾沃斯基决定对在任总统提出指控的适当渠道是通过国会。
“他甚至被列为掩盖真相审判中未被指控的同谋者，”阿克曼说。
阿克曼说，尼克松辞职时，起诉的想法可能会重新考虑，福特公司的赦免仅在几周之后。
Updegrove说，围绕尼克松的政治情绪与现在围绕特朗普的政治情绪有很大不同。
他说:“共和党人和民主党人都认为水门事件表明理查德·尼克松不适合执政。”。“今天，在华盛顿和这个国家，你们的分歧比那时大得多。所以，我不确定这些指控是否真的关系到共和党的基础。我们走着瞧。”
甚至在对川普的起诉落下之前，共和党的领导成员就把他视为民主党人布拉格的党派仇杀的受害者，众议院议长凯文·麦卡锡告诉共和党领导的众议院委员会调查联邦资金是否被用作布拉格调查的一部分。
“我认为特朗普阵营中的大多数人都认为，纽约是一个自由主义的堡垒，这些人首先会去抓唐纳德·特朗普。我认为他们认同这样一种观点，即在政府中有一种“深层次的反特朗普势力”，有意识地努力让唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)下台，这符合这种出色的“我们对他们，他们全力以赴来抓我”的说法，特朗普在宣传方面非常成功，“Updegrove说。
Updegrove说，起诉书最终可能在特朗普的遗产中扮演一个次要角色，因为人们对特朗普丑闻缠身的个人生活已经有了看法，对他行为的其他调查也涉及政府活动。
这些调查包括他在离任时对机密文件的处理，以及他推动推翻2020年总统选举的结果。
“这些问题更加严重，因为它们关系到国家事务，”Updegrove说。“但这是一件个人的事情，我认为这是一件完全不同的事情。我们知道唐纳德·特朗普在个人方面有性格缺陷。我认为人们愿意，尤其是他的支持者，愿意忽略他们，因为他愿意支持他们所倡导的政策。那完全是另一回事。”
“我认为这可能是一本关于唐纳德·特朗普的书中一章的重要内容。我不认为这是主要的事情，”Updegrove说。
他说，尽管如此，这并没有改变起诉书的历史性质，为特朗普臭名昭著的简历增添了一笔，特朗普已经是第一位被弹劾两次的总统——一次是因为指控他中止了对乌克兰的援助以迫使对拜登的调查以及对特朗普角色的质疑在2021年1月6日，起义。在这两起案件中，他都被参议院宣告无罪。
Updegrove表示，特朗普的起诉书和相关程序——由刑事司法系统处理，被传唤到法庭——具有巨大的象征性力量，因为他是总统。
福特在赦免尼克松时也承认了这一点，他当时说他担心另一种选择。在他的官方赦免声明中，福特声称“人们认为，对理查德·尼克松的审判，如果有必要，在一年或更长时间过去之前，不可能公正地开始。与此同时，这个国家因最近几周的事件而恢复的平静可能会因审判美国前总统的前景而不可挽回地失去。”
Updegrove说，特朗普现在成为第一位处于刑事审判边缘的总统，永久地改变了人们对他的记忆。
“在那本书的照片库中，你会看到根据这些程序拍摄的特朗普的大头照，这是其中一张较大的照片。这可是件大事。这本身就是一件大事，”Updegrove说。“它或多或少成为特朗普总统任期的一个象征，而不仅仅是特朗普遗产这一特定方面的反映。这是唐纳德·特朗普的大局。”
Updegrove说，更广泛地说，特朗普的起诉反映了这个国家的状况。
“曾经有一段时间，诚实和正直是总统任期的基石，”他说，引用了乔治·华盛顿和樱桃树的神话，或亚伯拉罕·林肯的“诚实的亚伯”的昵称，与特朗普的谎言习惯形成对比。
“现在特朗普已经被起诉，其他可能的起诉即将到来，”Updegrove说。“人们不禁要问，我们总统的道德观对美国人民来说是否仍然重要，或者说，你的一方获胜是否重要?”
Trump indictment marks unprecedented moment in presidential history
The indictment of Donald Trump marks an unprecedented development in the country's history -- the first time a former president has ever faced criminal charges.
Historians say that not since Richard Nixon had there been the real prospect of a commander-in-chief being formally accused of a crime, though Nixon avoided that fate after being pardoned by successor Gerald Ford.
Trump's indictment by a New York City grand jury was confirmed to ABC News by multiple sources on Thursday. While the charge or charges against him remain unclear, he had been under investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump's 2016 presidential bid to stop Daniels from going public about what she claimed was an affair with Trump.
Trump denies any wrongdoing, saying he is being politically persecuted, and maintains he never had a relationship with Daniels.
He has defended the $130,000 he paid Daniels, with his attorneys describing it as extortion.
The indictment -- resulting from just one of multiple investigations into Trump -- comes in the early stages of the 2024 presidential race as Trump seeks the Republican nomination for a third time.
Beyond the uncertainty that being indicted inserts into Trump's comeback campaign, the legal development thrusts him, the judicial system and perhaps the country itself into uncharted waters.
"There's nothing even remotely like it in American history. The closest that we come is Richard Nixon back in 1974, after he had left the White House upon resignation in the face of almost certain impeachment by the House of Representatives," said ABC News presidential historian Mark Updegrove.
The only other point of comparison is when then-Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804 and, after leaving office, was arrested, tried and found innocent around charges of staging an insurrection, Updegrove said. (Decades alter, in a separate matter, then-President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872 related to speeding on his carriage.)
"With Trump, it's a very different circumstance," Updegrove said.
Unlike Nixon, who was ultimately pushed out of office under bipartisan pressure, Trump has gotten backing from his fellow conservatives.
And unlike Nixon, Trump has no hope of a presidential pardon from his successor, Democrat Joe Biden.
President Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974 -- igniting instant controversy -- and said in a speech to the public that his decision was in the interest of ending the prolonged fallout from Watergate and its cover-up, which had roiled the country and led to a slew of political resignations or officials being charged.
In his pardon speech, Ford called Nixon a "longtime friend" who had "suffered enough, and will continue to suffer" amid "serious allegations and accusations [that] hang like a sword."
Attorney Nick Akerman, who helped investigate Nixon while working for Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, told ABC News he believed Nixon "could have been indicted" but Jaworski decided the appropriate channel for bringing charges against a sitting president was through Congress.
"He was even named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up trial," Akerman said.
By the time Nixon resigned from office, and the idea of an indictment could be revisited, the pardon from Ford came just weeks later, Akerman said.
Updegrove said the political mood around Nixon is much different than now, around Trump.
"It was Republicans, as well as Democrats, who saw the misdeeds of Watergate as being an indication that Richard Nixon was not fit for office," he said. "You have so much more division in Washington and in the country today than you did back then. So, I'm not sure that these charges will really matter what the Republican base. We'll see."
Even before the indictment came down against Trump, leading members of the GOP cast him as the victim of a partisan vendetta by Bragg, a Democrat, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy telling GOP-led House committees to investigate if federal funds were used as part of Bragg's investigation.
"I think most people in Trump's base are of the mind that New York is a liberal bastion, and it's those people first who would be out to get Donald Trump. I think they subscribe to the notion that there is a 'deep state' [of anti-Trump forces in the government], there is a conscious effort to get Donald Trump, and it plays into this brilliant us-versus-them, they're-all-out-to-get-me narrative that Trump has been so successful in propagating," Updegrove said.
The indictment may ultimately play a minor role in Trump's legacy by virtue of the fact that opinions are already settled on Trump's scandal-plagued personal life and the other investigations into his conduct involve government activity, Updegrove said.
Those probes include his handling of classified documents while out of office as well as his push to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"Those are more serious as they relate to matters of the state," Updegrove said. "But this is a personal thing, which I think makes it a fundamentally different thing. We know that Donald Trump has character blemishes on his personal side. I think people were willing, particularly in his base, were willing to overlook them because he was willing to uphold the policies that they advocated. That's a different matter altogether."
"I think it's probably a big part of a chapter on a book about Donald Trump. I don't see this as the major thing," Updegrove said.
Still, that doesn't take away from the historic nature of the indictment, he said, adding to a notorious resume for Trump that already includes being the first president to be impeached twice -- once over allegations he withheld aid to Ukraine to force the launch of a probe into Biden and once over Trump's role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate in both cases.
Updegrove said Trump's indictment and the related proceedings -- being processed by the criminal justice system, being summoned to court -- have immense symbolic power because he was president.
Ford acknowledged as much when granting clemency to Nixon, and he said then that he worried about the alternative. In his official proclamation of a pardon, Ford contended that "it is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States."
Trump now becoming the first president on the brink of a criminal trial permanently changes how he is remembered, Updegrove said.
"In the photo gallery that will be in that book, you are going to see as one of the larger photographs the mugshot of Trump, based on these proceedings. That's a pretty big deal. That in itself is a pretty big deal," Updegrove said. "It becomes a symbol, more or less, of the Trump presidency, not just a reflection of this particular aspect of Trump's legacy. It's the bigger picture of Donald Trump."
More broadly, Updegrove said, Trump's indictment reflects back on the state of the country.
"There was a time when honesty and integrity were the bedrock of the presidency," he said, citing George Washington and the myth of the cherry tree, or Abraham Lincoln's "Honest Abe" nickname, contrasted with Trump's habit of falsehoods.
"Now Trump has been indicted with other possible indictments to come," Updegrove said. "One has to wonder, does the morality of our president still matter to the American people or does it just matter that your side wins?"
