Donald Trump says he expects to be arrested Tuesday and calls for supporters to protest

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump, referring to himself, said “the leading Republican candidate and former President of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

I cited “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Messages left Saturday at 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 planned arrest.

In his posts, he repeated his lies that the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was stolen and he urged his supporters to “Protest, take back our nation!”

This language evoked the then-president’s message that preceded the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Law enforcement officials in New York have made security preparations for the possibility that Trump could be dictated to.

There has been no public announcement of a timeline for the secret grand jury work in the case, including any potential vote on indicting the ex-president.

Trump’s post echoes one made last summer when he announced on Truth Social that the FBI was searching his home as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents.

The Manhattan grand jury heard from witnesses, including former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who claims he orchestrated payments in 2016 to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Trump a decade earlier.

Trump denies the encounters happened, says he did nothing wrong and called the investigation a “witch hunt” by a Democratic prosecutor determined to sabotage the 2024 Republican presidential campaign.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office apparently looked into whether any state laws were broken in relation to the payments or how Trump’s company compensated Cohen for his work in keeping the allegations of the silent women.

Daniels and at least two former Trump aides – former political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokeswoman Hope Hicks – are among witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.

Cohen said that at Trump’s direction, he arranged payments totaling $280,000 to porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. According to Cohen, the payments were to buy their silence on Trump, who was then at the heart of his first presidential campaign