Donald Trump says he expects to be arrested, calls for supporters to protest
- Despite no evidence of an imminent arrest, Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social that he expected to be taken into custody on Tuesday
- In China, news of a possible Trump indictment skyrocketed to the top of the charts on the Twitter-like Weibo platform
Despite no evidence that Manhattan prosecutors have given any official notice to him or his lawyers, Trump declared in a post on his social media platform that he expected to be taken into custody on Tuesday.
The message seemed designed to pre-empt a formal announcement from prosecutors and to galvanise outrage from his base of supporters in advance of charges widely seen as coming soon.
In Trump’s direct encouragement of protest, and his capital letter demand to “take our nation back” the post evoked in foreboding ways the rhetoric he used before the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
After hearing from the then-president at a Washington rally that morning, his supporters marched to the Capitol and tried to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s White House victory, breaking through doors and windows of the building and leaving officers beaten and bloodied.
“Leading Republican candidate & former President of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week,” the 76-year-old billionaire said on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, adding: “Protest, take our nation back!”
District Attorney Alvin Bragg is thought to be eyeing charges in the hush money investigation and recently offered Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury. Local police are bracing for the public safety ramifications of an unprecedented prosecution of a former American president.
An indictment would make Trump the first former US president to be charged with a crime, marking an explosive and unpredictable development in the 2024 White House race – as Trump seeks again to clinch the Republican nomination.
