Trump claims he ‘will be arrested’ on Tuesday

Donald Trump has posted on his own social media platform Truth Social that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in the criminal case in New York involving hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Earlier this year the former US president called for protests by his supporters if he was indicted in any of the numerous criminal investigations in New York, Georgia and by federal authorities into his conduct relating to allegations of illegal campaign payments, election interference, efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election and keeping top secret documents at his home after leaving office. On Saturday he posted: “Take our nation back!”

In New York, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s team is investigating the hush money case and expectations had been building that Trump could be indicted as early as next week. Witnesses have been appearing before a grand jury, including Daniels and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.

But without any official confirmation of the likelihood or timing of any charges being brought, Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, posted on Truth Social a message referring to himself in the third person including the statement: “The far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

Law enforcement officials in New York have been making security preparations for the possibility that Trump could be indicted.

There has been no public announcement of any timeframe for the grand jury’s secret work in the case, including any potential vote on whether to indict Trump.

Messages left on Saturday with the district attorney’s office were not immediately returned. Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Trump did not provide any details on social media about how he knew about the expected arrest. In his postings, he repeated his lies that the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democratic US president Joe Biden was “stolen” because of voter fraud, and he urged his followers to “Protest. Take our nation back!”

That language evoked the message from the then-president that preceded the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when thousands of his extremist supporters invaded Congress in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent the official certification of Biden’s victory.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has resided at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and moved his residency status to Florida, from New York, where he was born and made his name and fortune before running for president and winning the 2016 election.

David Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach country in Florida, told CNN in an interview on Saturday morning that if Trump was indicted in New York “there will be protests here” and added: “You have to worry about potential violence.”

He noted that there would be questions about whether Trump would surrender to the New York authorities or face extradition from Florida, adding that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, a former ally of Trump but now a potential rival for the 2024 Republican nomination and a target of Trump’s ire, “has to sign off [any] extradition orders”. _Agencies