Donald Trump warned there could be violence if he’s indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in an escalation of verbal attacks on prosecutors investigating the former president for potential crimes.
(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump warned there could be violence if he’s indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in an escalation of verbal attacks on prosecutors investigating the former president for potential crimes.
In a Truth Social post early Friday, Trump asked how a former president could be charged with a crime given that “potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?”
Trump made the warning a day before his first major rally of the 2024 Republican campaign in Texas, a friendly locale full of symbolism. The rally will be in Waco, 30 years after federal law enforcement raided a cult headquarters and stoked anti-government sentiment among far-right extremists.
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In a torrent of posts, the former president has railed about government overreach and criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the other state and federal prosecutors who are investigating him in Washington, DC and Georgia.
Last weekend, Trump predicted he would be arrested in the New York probe related to a payment just before the 2016 election to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged affair. He’s also being investigated for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and his handling of classified documents.
The former president has labeled Bragg, who’s Black, racist and “an animal” and linked him to Democratic political donor George Soros, a frequent target of the right.
“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath,” Trump said of Bragg.
In a statement in Politico’s New York Playbook newsletter on Friday, civil rights leaders including Al Sharpton called Trump’s comments an effort to “burn down the greatest values of our democracy and destroy honest, ethical officials performing their constitutional duties” to avoid accountability.
Bragg has said in a statement that he will not tolerate intimidation.
Trump has previously called for his supporters to “protest, take our nation back,” similar to when he urged his supporters to assemble in Washington and march to the US Capitol in 2021 when Congress met to ratify Trump’s loss in the election and a violent mob stormed the complex.
New York City police officers put up security barricades outside Manhattan Criminal Court and Bragg’s office this week, but so far, protests have been minimal.
(Updates with additional details from third paragraph.)
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