Trump’s lawyers Susan Necheles and Joseph Tacopina said they will “vigorously fight” the charges. Tacopina said Trump was expected to be arraigned as early as next Tuesday.

At an arraignment, a defendant is presented with the charges facing them and generally enters a plea. A judge then decides whether they should be released on bail or taken into custody.

He said he was “completely innocent” and the indictment amounts to “political persecution” and “election interference at the highest level in history”.

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He described the case as the latest effort by Democrats to “destroy the Make America Great Again movement,” comparing the indictment to his earlier impeachments and the “Russia, Russia, Russia” investigation.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump’, but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” he said. “Never before in our nation’s history has this been done.”

Trump was among the first to report that he expected to be arrested earlier this month from his home in Florida, adding that it would come three days later, a date that came and went.

Further messaging kept attention on the issue. He wrote on social media last week that levelling charges against him could result in “potential death & destruction” even as he escalated his attack on Bragg, who brought the case.

Trump has appeared to relish – if not encourage – media attention surrounding his case, analysts have said, a move meant to bolster his reputation among supporters as a target and Washington outsider.

Prosecutors say Trump violated campaign finance laws when he paid Daniels US$130,000 during the 2016 presidential campaign in return for her silence over an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.

Top Republican allies have rallied behind Trump. In a letter last week, Republican congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote that Bragg’s then-threatened indictment was eroding confidence in the justice system and interfering in the 2024 presidential election.

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It also called on Bragg to testify before the House. The letter was co-signed by Republican congressmen James Comer of Kentucky and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, who head the Oversight and Administration committees, respectively.

Trump’s expected top Republican rival in the 2024 White House race, Ron DeSantis, also slammed Thursday’s indictment as “un-American”.

DeSantis, who is governor of Florida – where Trump resides – also said he will “not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue” with the indictment, which he called part of a “political agenda”.

Trump and his organisation face some 20 major lawsuits and investigations. The two focal points involve the former president’s alleged role in the January 6 Capitol riots and his conduct beforehand, such as a tape of him urging Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results, as well as an alleged effort to send an unauthorised slate of electors to cast the state’s Electoral College votes.

Among the indications that Trump would be indicted were Daniels’ meeting with prosecutors and the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before the grand jury earlier this month.

Cohen, who pleaded guilty to charges related to his work with the Trump Organisation, has said he paid Daniels at Trump’s direction and that Trump reimbursed him. Trump has acknowledged the reimbursement, but denied it was “hush money”.

Political analysts say the indictment could help Trump, at least in the short term, by galvanising his supporters in the belief that the formal criminal charge was motivated by Democrats, traditional Republicans and other forces arrayed against him.

In addition to the Daniels allegations, Trump faces inquiries related to his efforts to nullify the 2020 election result in Georgia, his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol and an investigation into his handling of classified documents.

Trump’s indictment does not necessarily prevent him from retaking the White House, however. The US Constitution sets forth only three requirements to become president: the person must be a natural-born American citizen, 35 years or older and a resident of the US for at least 14 years.

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney in Washington and agencies