Donald Trump, a former US president, says he anticipates being detained on Tuesday in connection with allegations that he gave a porn star hush money prior to the 2016 election.
Prior to his reported detention, Trump urged his supporters to protest in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
“On Tuesday of the next week, the leading Republican candidate and former President of the United States of America will be detained. Protest and reclaim our country! Writing in his own name and claiming a leak from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Trump made reference to himself.
He made no mention of the potential charges.
The district attorney’s office’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
The focus of the investigation is a $130,000 payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, in the final weeks of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels, whose actual name is Stephanie Clifford, claimed she was paid to keep a relationship with Trump from becoming public knowledge. Trump has refuted the existence of the affair.
Hence, whether these payments to Michael Cohen were genuinely a violation of campaign spending funds is what the grand jury is looking into.
On Friday night, Trump’s attorney told the CNBC channel that if his client were to be charged by a Manhattan grand jury, he would turn himself in to face criminal charges.
The 76-year-old Trump would become the first former president to be charged with a felony if the Manhattan district attorney were to file an indictment against him.
Trump, a Republican, served as president from 2017 to 2021 and has already announced his intention to run again. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden defeated him.
In addition to other charges, Cohen entered a guilty plea in 2018 to federal campaign financing violations related to his organizing payments to Daniels and another woman. He claims that Trump gave him the order to make the payments.
Cohen testified in front of the grand jury twice, once on Monday and once on Wednesday, according to Lanny Davis, his attorney. Grand jury hearings are private.
According to Daniels’ attorney, she spoke with the prosecution last week.
As he seeks the Republican Party’s presidential candidacy, Trump is dealing with a number of legal issues, including the inquiry.
Trump is accused of a number of much more serious offenses, Hanna stated. “But, he has selected this case to highlight and has made a call for protests, very similar to the call he made back on January 6 when the violence broke out at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and for which Trump is now under investigation.”
When his supporters attempted to stop the US Capitol’s certification of Biden’s election victory on January 6, 2021, police officers were beaten and bloodied in the process. His supporters also broke through doors and windows of the building.
In Georgia, a state-level criminal investigation into Trump’s attempts to get the results of the 2020 election thrown out is also ongoing.
Currently, a special counsel is looking into how Trump handled secret government records after leaving office and his attempts to rig the 2020 election.
Two prosecutors who worked on the inquiry resigned after the former president’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, was found guilty of tax fraud in a civil case in December but was not charged.
According to a February Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump has the support of 43 percent of Republicans, which is higher than the 31 percent received by his closest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not yet declared his campaign.
