Trump says he expects to be arrested, calls for protests
NEW YORK — Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that his arrest is imminent and issued an extraordinary call for his supporters to to protest as a New York grand jury investigates hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president.
Even as a Trump lawyer and spokesperson said there had been no communication from prosecutors, Mr. Trump declared in a post on his social media platform that he expects to be taken into custody Tuesday.
His message seemed designed to preempt a formal announcement from prosecutors and to galvanize outrage from his base of supporters in advance of widely anticipated charges. Within hours, he sent a fundraising email to supporters while influential Republicans in Congress issued statements inhis defense.
In a later post that went beyond simply exhorting loyalists to protest about his legal peril, the 2024 presidential candidate directed his overarching ire in all capital letters at the Biden administration and raised the prospect of civil unrest: “IT’S TIME!!!” he wrote. “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
District Attorney Alvin Bragg is thought to be eyeing charges in the hush money investigation, and recently offered Mr. Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury.
But there has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case. At least one additional witness is expected to testify, further indicating that no vote to indict has yet been taken, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to publicly discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
That did not stop Mr. Trump from taking to his social media platform to say “illegal leaks” from Mr. Bragg’s office indicate that “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”
A Trump lawyer, Susan Necheles, said Mr. Trump’s post was “based on the media reports,” though the origin of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday reference was unclear. The district attorney’s office declined comment.
Mr. Trump’s aides and legal have been preparing the possibility of an indictment. Should that happen, he would be arrested only if he refused to surrender. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have previously said he would follow normal procedure, meaning he would likely agree to surrender at a New York Police Department precinct or directly Mr. Bragg’s office.
Even as Mr. Trump, 76, pursues his latest White House campaign, there is no question an indictment would be a distraction and give fodder to opponents and critics tired of the legal scandals that have long enveloped him.
In addition to the hush money inquiry in New York, Mr. Trump faces separate criminal investigations in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election.
The grand jury has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he orchestrated payments in 2016 to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.
Mr. Trump denies the encounters occurred, says he did nothing wrong and has cast the investigation as a “witch hunt” by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging the Republican’s 2024 campaign.
Mr. Bragg’s office has apparently been examining whether any state laws were broken in connection with the payments or the way Mr. Trump’s company compensated Cohen.
Porn actor Stormy Daniels and at least two former Trump aides — onetime political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks — are among witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.
Cohen has said that at Mr. Trump’s direction, he arranged payments totaling $280,000 to Ms. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. According to Cohen, the payouts were to buy their silence about Mr. Trump, who was then in the thick of his first presidential campaign.
Cohen and federal prosecutors said Mr. Trump’s company paid him $420,000 as reimbursement for the $130,000 payment to Daniels and to cover bonuses and other supposed expenses. The company classified those payments internally as legal expenses. The $150,000 payment to Ms. McDougal was made by the then-publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, which kept her story from coming to light.
Federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute the Enquirer’s corporate parent in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation that led to charges against Cohen in 2018. Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors team never charged Mr. Trump with any crime.