Trump claims he ‘will be arrested’ on Tuesday in New York criminal case | Donald Trump

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.

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, merely citing “illegal leaks”. In his postings, he repeated his lies that the 2020 presidential election that he lost to 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 his native New York.

David Aronberg, state attorney for Palm Beach country in Florida, told CNN 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 Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a former ally of Trump but now a potential 2024 election rival, and a target of Trump’s ire, “has to sign off [any] extradition orders”.

It emerged in January that Bragg had made the surprise move to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence in the Daniels case.

Daniels met with investigators in Manhattan earlier this week to discuss Trump’s role in a $130,000 payment she received in 2016 aimed at dissuading her from going public about claims she had a sexual liaison with Trump in 2006, before his political career but during his marriage to Melania Trump – an infidelity Trump denies.

This as Cohen gave testimony before the New York grand jury into the case. In 2016 during the election that Trump went on to win, Cohen made the payment and arranged another payout to a different woman, as Trump faced allegations of previous sexual assault and harassment from multiple women – with the money paid at Trump’s direction, Cohen has asserted.

Any charges in this case would most likely involve state crimes of falsifying business records, typically a misdemeanor but a felony if it was part of a cover-up or wider criminal wrongdoing, and here could revolve around campaign finance illegality.

Federal prosecutors in 2018 charged Cohen with campaign finance crimes related to payments to Daniels and to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, arguing that the payouts amounted to impermissible gifts to Trump’s election effort.

McDougal, who was paid $150,000, alleged she had an affair with the married Trump in 2006-2007. He denied it.

Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.

Separately, last year the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the appointment of Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor and top former justice department official, as special counsel to oversee the investigations into Trump’s role in retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

And in Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, is investigating whether Trump interfered in the 2020 election in the state.

Meanwhile, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, is suing Trump and his eponymous family business, the Trump Organization, saying it misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets to get loans and tax benefits.

In January the Trump Organization was fined for tax fraud. Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge of the criminal scheme. Bragg at the time said it closed one chapter but “we now move on to the next chapter” as the Stormy Daniels case continued.

And in April the civil trial is due in a case where former magazine columnist E Jean Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

Earlier this month the judge said he would allow an infamous tape of Trump boasting about sexual aggression towards women to be used at trial.

Carroll has also sued Trump for defamation after he denied the rape happened or that he knew her, after she first described in a 2019 book the alleged attack.