Former US President Donald Trump said he will be arrested on Tuesday by the New York attorney general, following the case over an alleged payment made to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about their sexual encounters. .
Trump declared on Truth Social, his social network, that “illegal escapes” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicate that the “leadership candidate and former President of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday.”
“Protest, bring back our nation,” Trump wrote, urging his supporters to demonstrate.
Prosecutors in New York have been making security preparations in the event that Trump could be charged.
So far, there has been no public announcement of a deadline for completing the grand jury’s work on the case, including any potential vote on whether to indict the former president for those crimes.
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office declined to comment.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg began, earlier this year, to present evidence before a grand jury investigating a payment of $130,000 (€121,000) that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, made to Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims she had an affair with Trump a decade earlier, which the former president has consistently denied ever happened.
Earlier this month, Bragg’s office invited Trump to testify before the grand jury investigating the Daniels payments, according to Trump’s attorney Susan Necheles. Legal experts took the request as a sign that an indictment could be imminent.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations linked to his payments to Daniels and another woman, among other crimes. The attorney said Trump instructed him to make the payments. The Manhattan District Attorney did not at the time charge Trump with any crime.
Cohen testified before the grand jury on Monday and again on Wednesday, according to his attorney, Lanny Davis. Grand jury hearings are not public.
The investigation is one of several legal problems facing Donald Trump as he is campaigning to secure the nomination as the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
O ex-president is also the subject of a criminal investigation in the Georgia about his efforts to annul the 2020 presidential results in that state, which he lost to the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.
An independent reviewer appointed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland is currently investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents from his Administration after leaving office, as well as his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Last year, Bragg’s office secured the Trump Organization’s conviction on tax fraud charges. But the prosecutor refused to charge Trump himself with financial crimes related to his business practices, prompting two prosecutors who worked on the investigation to resign.
Donald Trump is already leading the race for his party’s nomination for next year’s presidential nomination, garnering 43% of support from Republican voters in a February Reuters/Ipsos poll, compared with 31% for his closest rival, the governor of Florida. , Ron DeSantis, who has yet to announce his candidacy.