Former President Donald Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan district attorney's investigation
NEW YORK -- Former President Donald Trump says he expects to be arrested Tuesday.
He announced the news on the social media platform Truth Social. The pending indictments stem from the Manhattan district attorney's investigation into alleged hush money payments from Trump to women who say they had sexual encounters with the former president.
In Trump's post, he urges supporters to protest and "take our nation back."
Trump's attorney told CBS News his post was based off media leaks and speculation, not direct communication from the DA's office, adding, "President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system." However, Trump's legal team previously said they would follow normal procedure and the former president plans to surrender to the changes if and when they come.
"Really, what he's doing is he's trying to head off any potential indictment by rallying his troops," political strategist Basil Smikle said.
Richard Serafini, a criminal defense attorney and former criminal justice trial attorney, says we can expect an arrest later this week, but probably not Tuesday.
"There certainly seems to be a lot that has to be done in order for him to be arrested on Tuesday," he said. "It appears the grand jury is looking at falsification of business records. Now, in New York, falsification of business records is ordinarily a misdemeanor, which means that it's punishable by less than a year in prison. It can be elevated to a felony if the falsification of the business records was done either to commit another crime or to conceal another crime."
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District Attorney Alvin Bragg is thought to be eyeing charges in the hush money investigation, and recently offered Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury.
CBS2 has learned Bragg sent an internal memo addressing safety concerns to his staff ahead of this week's potential protests. He said he has confidence in the NYPD and any threat against his office will be investigated.
Local law enforcement officials are bracing for the public safety ramifications of an unprecedented prosecution of a former American president.
"There is a lot of concern that his words still will incite some significant activity, potentially some violence," Smikle said.
There has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury's secret work in the case. At least one additional witness is expected to testify, further indicating that no vote to indict has yet been taken, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to publicly discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
CBS2 did reach out to the district attorney's office and was told "no comment."
"We have never gotten this close to an indictment of a former president," Smikle said.
In addition to the hush money inquiry in New York, Trump faces separate criminal investigations in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election.
A Justice Department special counsel has also been presenting evidence before a grand jury investigating Trump's possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate. It is not clear when those investigations will end or whether they might result in criminal charges, but they will continue regardless of what happens in New York, underscoring the ongoing gravity – and broad geographic scope – of the legal challenges confronting the former president.
After his post, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy decried any plans to prosecute Trump as an "outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA" whom he claimed was pursuing "political vengeance." Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, issued a statement with a similar sentiment.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham stood by Trump, saying, "I think this is an effort that's ongoing, never-ending to destroy Donald Trump."
Former Vice President Mike Pence weighed in on Trump's claims, saying, "I think many Americans are taken aback at the unprecedented indictment of a former president ... We want to send a very clear message that their violence will not be tolerated."
Pence added, "The idea of indicting a former president of the United States is deeply troubling to me, as it is to tens of millions of Americans, and particularly happening in what appears to be a politically charged environment in New York."
Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in, saying, "No one is above the law, not even a former president of the United States."
"If this indictment does come to fruition, we are all in unchartered territory. It's gonna be really difficult to talk about or predict what comes next because we've never in the history of the United States of America been in this situation," Smikle said.
The grand jury 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, says he did nothing wrong and has cast the investigation as a "witch hunt" by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging the Republican's 2024 campaign. Trump also has labeled Bragg, who is Black, a "racist" and has accused the prosecutor of letting crime in the city run amok while he has focused on Trump. New York remains one of the safest cities in the country.
Bragg's office has apparently been examining whether any state laws were broken in connection with the payments or the way Trump's company compensated Cohen for his work to keep the women's allegations quiet.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels and at least two former Trump aides — onetime political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks — are among witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.
Cohen has said that at Trump's direction, he arranged payments totaling $280,000 to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. According to Cohen, the payouts were to buy their silence about Trump, who was then in the thick of his first presidential campaign.
Cohen and federal prosecutors said Trump's company paid him $420,000 as reimbursement for the $130,000 payment to Daniels and to cover bonuses and other supposed expenses. The company classified those payments internally as legal expenses. The $150,000 payment to McDougal was made by the then-publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, which kept her story from coming to light.
Federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute the Enquirer's corporate parent in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation that led to charges against Cohen in 2018. Prosecutors said the payments to Daniels and McDougal amounted to impermissible, unrecorded gifts to Trump's election effort.
Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.
