Trump claims he will be arrested on Tuesday and calls for protests to ‘take our nation back’

Former US President Donald Trump. Photo: (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

David Taintor and Andrew Feinberg

March 18 2023 01:11 PM

Donald Trump has claimed that he will be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests to “take our nation back”.

In a furious all-caps post on his Truth Social page, the former president railed against “a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorney’s office” which is likely to bring charges against Mr Trump over a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

“NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social.

The twice-impeached former president’s claim that he will be taken into police custody early next week comes less than a day after reports that law enforcement authorities in New York have been quietly preparing for the possibility that Mr Trump will stoke civil unrest if he is subject to any form of legal accountability whatsoever.

The ex-president’s call for “protest” to “take our nation back” on the day he says he’ll be arrested are a clear echo to his call for supporters to descend on Washington DC in the run-up to the final certification of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

At the time, Mr Trump had called for a “wild” protest on January 6 2021, the day Congress was set to carry out that certification in a joint session presided over by then-vice president Mike Pence.

After the then-president delivered an incendiary speech near the White House in which he called on his supporters to “fight like hell,” a riotous mob led by violent extremists began assaulting police officers and stormed the Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of his 2020 election defeat.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has not yet indicated that Mr Trump has actually been charged in the hush-money case — or any other matter. But the New York-based investigation is just one of several potential areas of criminal jeopardy for the ex-president.

Mr Trump also faces the possibility of charges from prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and from two separate federal investigations now led by a Department of Justice special counsel, Jack Smith.