Former U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested on Tuesday (March 21) in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney's office and called on his supporters to protest, according to a post on Truth Social on Saturday (March 18), Reuters reports.
Trump said, without providing evidence, that "illegal leaks" from the Manhattan district attorney's office indicated that he would be arrested. He did not say what the charges would be.
"Illegal leaks from a corrupt & highly political Manhattan district attorney's office ... indicate that, with no crime being able to be proven ... the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week," Trump wrote.
"Protest, take our nation back!" Trump said.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office earlier this year began presenting evidence to a grand jury investigating a $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of Trump's 2016 campaign.
A spokesperson for the district attorney's office declined to comment.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, says she had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair happened.
Trump was Republican president from 2017 to 2021 and has launched a. campaign to return to the White House in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Trump is also confronting a state-level criminal probe in Georgia over efforts to overturn the 2020 results in that state.
Trump leads his early rivals for his party's nomination, holding the support of 43% of Republicans in a February Reuters/Ipsos poll, compared with 31% for his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not yet announced his candidacy.
