In an overnight social media post, former President Donald Trump predicted that “potential death and destruction” may result if, as expected, he is charged by the Manhattan district attorney in connection with hush-money payments to a porn star made during the 2016 campaign.
The comments from Trump, made between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on his social media site, Truth Social, were a stark escalation in his rhetorical attacks on the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, ahead of a likely indictment on charges that Trump said would be unfounded.
“What kind of person,” Trump wrote of Bragg, “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 that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country?”
“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA!” the former president wrote.
A spokesperson for Bragg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an email to his staff last week, Bragg wrote that the office “will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
“We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York,” he added.
Trump is also being investigated by the Justice Department in connection with his efforts to stay in power leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a post this past Saturday, Trump erroneously claimed that he was to be arrested three days later and urged people to protest and “take our nation back.”
Since then, he has called Bragg, the first Black district attorney in Manhattan, an “animal” and appeared to mock calls from some of his own allies for people to protest peacefully, or not at all.
