Trump predicts imminent arrest, calls for protests

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It is unclear whether Trump’s legal team informed him of an impending indictment or whether he was speculating based on news coverage.

A Trump spokesman clarified that there was no actual “notification” of an imminent arrest. The spokesperson added that he “will be in Texas next weekend for a giant rally. Make America Great!”

A person familiar with Trump operations said they are not actively organizing protests.

A spokesman for Bragg declined to comment Saturday. A spokesman for the NYPD declined to comment. A Secret Service spokeswoman said they could not comment on specific protection plans or protected movements.

Trump played golf Saturday morning and was scheduled to travel to Oklahoma Saturday afternoon to attend the NCAA wrestling championships.

News reports late Friday said Bragg had asked law enforcement authorities in New York City to begin discussions about the security and logistical issues involved in responding to a potential indictment of Trump. there. It’s unclear whether the potential criminal charges will result in Trump’s arrest at his new home in Florida, but one of Trump’s lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, said Trump would surrender to face the charges in Manhattan if the A grand jury will return an indictment in the coming days.

But Trump’s new call for supporters to “take back our country” hints at the kind of civil unrest he could unleash if he faces charges. His description of his expected arrest was followed by a long, rambling thread in which he said “The American Dream is dead” and falsely asserted that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. The rhetoric was similar to his statements in Jan. 6, 2021, when he urged supporters to “fight like hell” to keep Joe Biden in office.

“If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country,” Trump said at the time, before thousands of supporters marched on the Capitol and stormed the building, endangering Congress and the move power.

Trump’s clarion call to his supporters came in a pair of rambling social media posts early Saturday that painted a bleak, dystopian vision of America and suggested his arrest was coming soon.

“Our country today is third world and dying. The American dream is dead! Radical left anarchists have stolen [sic] our presidential election, and with it, the heart of our our [sic] country. Patriotic Americans are arrested and jailed like animals, while criminals and leftist thugs are allowed to roam the streets, kill and burn without reward,” Trump wrote.

Bragg’s predecessor as district attorney, Cy Vance Jr., conducted a lengthy investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices. That investigation resulted in tax evasion charges against two Trump business entities and the group’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. He pleaded guilty last year and a jury indicted Trump companies on the charges.

However, the investigation did not result in any charges against Trump himself before Vance was replaced by Bragg at the beginning of last year. One of the prosecutors leading that investigation has quit, saying Bragg declined to pursue a broad case of tax fraud and business fraud.

However, Bragg’s investigation has focused in recent months on a narrower issue: whether Trump committed a crime by disguising a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 as a legal expense rather than as an expenditure aimed at strengthening his current presidency. campaign.

The former Trump lawyer who made the arrangements, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges, including one that admitted to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payment. However, Trump was never charged with his role.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with the payment and denied Daniels’ claim that the couple had sex on one occasion in 2006.

Trump’s legal woes are not limited to the Manhattan investigation. He faces an expected indictment in Fulton County, Ga., where a district attorney is investigating his effort to subvert the 2020 election. He also faces heightened legal threats from a special investigation by attorney in his election subversion attempt and efforts to prevent the government from retrieving many sensitive national security documents hidden at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Meridith McGraw and Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.

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