Former President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he expects to be arrested Tuesday.
This comes as a New York prosecutor is eyeing charges in a case examining hush money paid to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president, Los Angeles Times reports.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network early Saturday that “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicate that “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”
Messages left 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. In his postings, he urged his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” and repeated his claim that the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was stolen.
It was such incitements by the former president that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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 time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case, including any potential vote on whether to indict the ex-president.
Trump’s posting echoes one made last summer when he broke the news on Truth Social that the FBI was searching his home as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents.
The grand jury in Manhattan has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he orchestrated payments in 2016 to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies the encounters occurred and has described the investigation as a “witch hunt”.
