Trump calls for protests over expected arrest on New York charges
Published in News & Features
Former President Donald Trump said he expected to be arrested next week on New York charges and, echoing his rhetoric before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, called for protesters to “take our nation back.”
Trump said in a Saturday morning all-caps post on his Truth Social platform that, based on unspecified leaks, he expected to be arrested on Tuesday in a case being pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“Protest, take our nation back,” Trump concluded his post. He repeated his call for protests in a second Truth Social post Saturday afternoon. “It’s time!!!” he wrote.
Trump has not received any official notification of charges or arrest plans by Bragg’s office and will be in Texas next weekend for a campaign rally, a spokesman for the former president said in a statement issued later on Saturday. A spokeswoman for the district attorney declined to comment.
Susan Necheles, a lawyer for Trump, said on Saturday that the former president was responding to news reports that New York and federal law enforcement would be meeting early next week to discuss security precautions around a possible indictment.
Those reports did not say Trump would be arrested Tuesday, and it’s unclear where the former president got that date.
Bragg has been conducting a grand jury investigation into a hush-money payment Trump allegedly made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public before the 2016 election about a claimed decade-old sexual encounter. Charges in the case are widely expected, but no indictment has been announced.
The former president has denied the allegations and slammed the probe as politically motivated, doing so again in his Saturday morning post.
Trump’s calls for protest Saturday were reminiscent of his comments leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a joint session of Congress met to ratify his 2020 election defeat by President Joe Biden.
Reminiscent of Jan. 6
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