Trump Threatens ‘Death and Destruction’ If He’s Arrested

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Just days after he called for his followers to protest his possible indictment, Donald Trump suggested that his future arrest could result in “potential death and destruction,” in his most inflammatory comments yet about the case.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Friday morning, Trump wrote a lengthy post on TruthSocial that escalated his recent rhetoric against the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into the role he played in making hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?,” he wrote.

Trump then answered his own question, adding “Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!,” in clear reference to Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, whom the former president called an “animal” a day earlier.

This all began last weekend when Trump predicted his own arrest would come this Tuesday (it did not), urging his followers to protest and to “TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” in a repeat of the rhetoric that inspired his supporters to attack the Capitol.

As the nation waited to see what the grand jury would decide, Politico spoke to Lanny Davis, who is representing Bragg’s star witness, Michael Cohen. In an interview, Davis gave his perspective on the case against Trump, raising a hypothetical that the grand jury determines Trump told Cohen to make the payments. “Michael went to prison. How come [Trump’s] any different?” he said.

But on the chance that Bragg doesn’t end up charging Trump with a crime?

“I’ll be disappointed. But I will grant him a good-faith judgment. And judgments can always be disagreed with, but I’ll be disappointed for sure,” he said.