Biden Refuses to Answer Questions About Trump Indictment

President Joe Biden on Friday refused to answer questions about the unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump, continuously telling reporters he had “no comment.”

“No. I’m not going to talk about the Trump indictment,” he said multiple times as he left the White House for a trip to Mississippi.

Asked again, Biden responded: “I have no comment on Trump.”

Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury Thursday, a historic reckoning after years of investigations into his personal, political, and business dealings — and an abrupt jolt to his bid to retake the White House.

The exact nature of the charges was unclear Friday because the indictment remained under seal, but they stem from payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter.

Prosecutors said they were working to coordinate Trump’s surrender, which could happen early next week. They did not say whether they intended to seek prison time in the event of a conviction, a development that wouldn’t prevent Trump from seeking and assuming the presidency.

The indictment, the first against a former U.S. president, injects a local district attorney’s office into the heart of a national presidential race and ushers in criminal proceedings in a city that the former president for decades called home.

Arriving at a time of deep political divisions, the charges are likely to reinforce rather than reshape dueling perspectives of those who see accountability as long overdue and those who, like Trump, feel the Republican is being targeted for political purposes by a Democratic prosecutor.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.