(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday broke his silence on possible indictment of former President Donald Trump in remarks that first criticized the Manhattan district attorney who would issue the indictment but then swiped at the former president.
“We are not involved in this. Won’t be involved in this. I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus…” DeSantis said at a news conference in Panama City, Florida.
DeSantis was asked by a reporter from the Florida Standard what his thoughts were “on the rumored Trump indictment, if he had “any role in it,” and if charges were brought against Trump, would DeSantis “have any role in extradition to New York,” since Trump is now a Florida resident.
“Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said, without mentioning Trump directly by name.
“But what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda, and weaponizing the office,” he continued.
On his social media platform Saturday morning, Trump claimed that he would be arrested Tuesday in connection to the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election — he also called for his supporters to protest.
Trump’s allies and supporters have been publicly urging DeSantis to weigh in on Trump’s proclamation of his possible indictment since the former president posted the news on Saturday. They’ve also pressured DeSantis to possibly block Trump’s extradition from Florida to New York.
DeSantis is widely considered to be Trump’s strongest competitor for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The Florida governor has privately indicated to allies that he expects to jump in the race around May or June, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Former Trump senior adviser Jason Miller thanked some other confirmed or possible 2024 GOP contenders for their comments slamming the potential indictment while condemning DeSantis and hopeful Nikki Haley for not responding to the news.
“Thank you, Vice President Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy, for pointing out how Radical Left Democrats are trying to divide our Country in the name of Partisan Politics,” Miller said in a tweet on Saturday.
“Radio silence from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Amb. Nikki Haley,” he said.
On Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence said that the possible indictment of Trump would be “a politically charged prosecution,” during an interview with ABC News “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, on Saturday.
Ramaswamy tweeted on Saturday that a “Trump indictment would be a national disaster.”
“It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its political rivals,” Ramaswamy wrote.
“This will mark a dark moment in American history and will undermine public trust in our electoral system itself. I call on the Manhattan District Attorney to reconsider this action and to put aside partisan politics in service of preserving our Constitutional republic,” he said.
ABC News’ Jay O’Brien and Brittany Shepherd contributed to this report.
(LINCOLN, Neb.) — For the past three weeks, Nebraska State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh has been on an endless run, speaking on the Senate floor on just about every topic: legislation, fish fries, Girl Scout cookies and the movie “Madagascar.”
The state’s non-partisan, single-chamber legislature is ruled by Republican lawmakers, however, it takes 33 votes to overcome a filibuster, and the legislature has only 32 Republicans.
Now, Cavanaugh is heading into her fourth week of fighting an anti-LGBTQ bill that would ban transgender health care for people under the age of 19. According to a representative from Speaker of the Legislature Sen. John Arch’s office, debate on the bill is set to begin on Tuesday, and is being brought to the floor sooner thanks to a deal between Cavanaugh and Arch.
Nebraska is one of at least 23 states considering restrictions on gender-affirming care.
“It’s a parental rights violation. As a parent, I’m opposed to any government taking away my ability to make medical decisions for my child,” Cavanaugh told ABC News in an interview. “But in addition to that, it’s an assault on trans youth and their health care. And it’s going to result in extraordinarily negative outcomes for our trans youth.”
LB 574 would ban puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries – the last of which are done only on a case-by-case basis on adolescents, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Gender-affirming hormone therapy has been shown on average to improve the mental health and reduce the risk of negative outcomes, including the risk of suicidality, of transgender adolescents and teenagers, according to recent studies in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Major national medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and over 20 more organizations support gender-affirming care as generally safe, effective, beneficial and medically necessary with appropriate care.
Sen. Kathleen Kauth, the bill’s sponsor, has argued that her bill is intended to protect children.
“Children deserve to know that their body isn’t something that needs to be fixed,” Kauth said during a March 1 debate on the bill. “They deserve to grow up whole and they deserve to be given a chance at life as an adult before that is taken away from them by these medical practices.”
At least 427 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced or considered in 2023 alone, according to the ACLU.
Nebraska itself is facing at least four, including a trans sports ban, a ban on people under 21 attending drag shows, and a bill that would allow doctors to deny performing elective medical treatment based on personal beliefs.
“This is not our job,” said Cavanaugh. “This is not what we should be doing. We should not be legislating hate. We were not sent here to legislate hate. We were sent here to do the business of the state, which is tax policy, and budgets; there’s so much work to be done to address the economic crisis that we are all in in this country.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Republican chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Administration committees issued a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday demanding testimony and documents related to the investigation and potential indictment of former President Donald Trump.
The joint letter, from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, is the first action by Republican House committees in response to Trump saying he expects to be indicted this week and after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy quickly announced he planned to use committees to probe the potential indictment and whether federal funding was involved.
“You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office,” the letter reads.
Jordan also told ABC News on Monday that he doesn’t believe Trump broke the law and called the expected indictment unprecedented in nature. When pressed on whether Jordan had any evidence to believe that federal funds were used in a local investigation, he said he did not and that’s why they’re looking into it.
McCarthy said during a press conference on Sunday evening at the House Republicans’ retreat in Orlando, Florida that he doesn’t think people should protest in relation to any potential impending indictment of Trump.
“I don’t think people should protest, no,” McCarthy said when asked if he condones Trump’s call to protest in relation to it made over Truth Social.
McCarthy wouldn’t directly denounce Trump using similar language that he did prior to Jan. 6, but added, “We want calmness out there” and “no violence.”
When asked if he believes it’s still appropriate for Trump to run if he’s convicted of a crime, McCarthy said “the Constitution allows him to.”
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Monday indefinitely delayed the defamation lawsuit writer E. Jean Carroll brought against former President Donald Trump.
Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, claimed Trump defamed her when he denied her allegation that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.
The trial had been set to begin on April 10. Attorneys for Carroll and Trump declined to comment.
Judge Lewis Kaplan adjourned the case without setting a new date while he awaits a decision from a different court that could affect whether the trial goes forward.
The Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, which governs the conduct of federal employees, is deciding whether Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he spoke out against Carroll. If so, the Justice Department would substitute for Trump as the defendant and the case would be over, as the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.
Last year Carroll filed a second defamation lawsuit against Trump that also alleged battery. In his ruling, Judge Kaplan declined to merge the cases for the purposes of trial.
In a criminal case, Trump could decline to testify in his defense. In a civil case, he could be called to testify by the plaintiff. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has not said whether she would.
(NEW YORK) — The Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump over a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels will hear from an additional witness on Monday, attorney and longtime Trump ally Bob Costello, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Costello at one point represented Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and attorney, who is a key witness for the district attorney’s office since Cohen wrote the $130,000 check to Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Prosecutors in New York are looking into whether Trump falsified business records in connection with that money, which was allegedly to keep Daniels from talking about a long-denied affair, sources familiar with the matter previously told ABC News.
The district attorney’s office informed Trump earlier this month of his right to testify before a grand jury in the probe, a possible signal that prosecutors are moving toward a charging decision.
In New York, potential targets of investigations are, by law, given the chance to appear before the grand jury hearing evidence.
Trump has “no plans” to participate in the grand jury investigation, his attorney Joe Tacopina told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Good Morning America last week.
However, the Trump legal team did petition to have Costello testify before the grand jury, sources said Sunday.
Cohen, whom Trump has turned on and dismissed as a “fraudster,” said Sunday he was asked to make himself available Monday as a rebuttal witness.
Reached by ABC News, Costello declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg also declined to comment. News of Costello’s pending appearance was first reported by The New York Times.
Trump has acknowledged paying Daniels, which Tacopina described as akin to an extortion payment, but Trump has said he did nothing wrong and cast the district attorney’s work as biased.
On social media on Saturday, he claimed he would be arrested on Tuesday and called for protests to “TAKE OUR NATION BACK.”
A spokesperson subsequently walked some of that back and said there had been no notification that Bragg “has decided to take his Witch-Hunt to the next level.”
In an email to staff, reviewed by ABC News, Bragg wrote that “we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
Trump’s social media post was denounced as “reckless” by Democrats including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, appearing on ABC’s This Week,”said, “No one is above the law.”
In a separate sit-down for This Week, former Vice President Mike Pence said of Trump’s potential arrest: “It just feels like a politically charged prosecution.”
(WASHINGTON) — In an exclusive ABC News interview, former Vice President Mike Pence expressed dissatisfaction with the possible arrest of former President Donald Trump and expanded on pointed remarks regarding his former boss and the Capitol insurrection — as well as his vision for the future of the country as he mulls a potential 2024 presidential bid.
In a sit-down in Des Moines, Iowa, that aired Sunday, Pence told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl that Trump’s handling of Jan. 6 was one of the reasons the country and, perhaps more pointedly, Republicans need a “fresh start.”
“The president’s wrong. He was wrong that day and … I had actually hoped that he would come around in time, Jon, that he would see that the cadre of legal advisers that he surrounded himself with had led him astray,” Pence said after Karl played a clip of Trump defending the rioters. “But he hasn’t done so and it’s, I think, it’s one of the reasons why the country just wants a fresh start.”
Pence, who has been traveling across the country and recently released a memoir, has not been shy in suggesting that his party should be looking elsewhere for candidates for the White House, repeatedly saying he’s confident there will be “better choices” than Trump even as he says he has not yet made a decision about running himself.
He told Karl that any hypothetical support for Trump in the 2024 race is “yet to be seen” — though he wouldn’t rule it out while once again indicating there will be other options for the American people.
“We’re going to decide as a family whether we offer ourselves as one of them, but I think different times call for different leadership,” Pence said.
“I think the American people long for leadership at the highest level that’s focused on the issues that are affecting their lives. And also, I think they longed for leadership that will keep faith with our highest traditions,” he said.
But he remained vague about when, specifically, he might announce. He has said that he and his family hope to come to a decision by the spring but when Karl followed up, he demurred, only adding that he’s getting “closer” amid “prayerful consideration.”
Jan. 6 accountability
Since leaving office in 2021, Pence has worked to separate himself from Trump regarding the violence of Jan. 6 and the related push to overturn the 2020 presidential election. At the same time, he has said he remains proud of the administration’s work and legislative accomplishments — on lowering taxes, on military spending, on the border and more — which he reiterated in his ABC News interview, only days after again rebuking Trump’s choices around the Capitol attack.
Speaking at the white-tie Gridiron Dinner in Washington, Pence said earlier this month that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6.”
While the event wasn’t recorded, his quotes were published by journalists present — and he went further in his “This Week” interview.
“We all face the judgment of history, and I believe in the fullness of time that history will hold Donald Trump accountable for the events of Jan. 6, as it will other people that were involved,” he said.
Karl asked him: “In what ways?”
“Well it will be the judgment of history, I truly believe it. And I also think the American people will also have their say,” Pence said. “I mean the president is now a candidate for office again, he’s running for election, but as I go around the country, I’m convinced the American people have learned the lessons of that day.”
Pence said he had his own strong feelings about what happened but seemed to set that aside for a broader message as he weighs a potential campaign.
“I was angry that day. And while I believe in forgiveness, I’ve been working hard at that for a while. The president let me down that day. … but be honest with you, the emotions of that day, the emotion since, I just haven’t had time for it. To me, there’s just too many issues that we’re facing this country today under the failed policies of this [Biden] administration that I don’t have a lot of time for looking backwards.”
When pressed by Karl if he still finds Trump to be a man of his word, Pence conceded that he holds some disappointment in Trump personally, despite believing the pair delivered on their administration’s promises.
“One issue after another, I saw the president keep the word that he made to the American people and I was proud those four years to stand with him. And I know that grates on some people in the national media, Jon,” Pence said.
“As I wrote in my book, I’m incredibly proud of the record of our administration,” he said, though he acknowledged, “It didn’t end well, ended in controversy.”
Karl returned to the question: “I’m not asking you about the record. I’m asking you about the man.”
“I was deeply disappointed with the president’s words and conduct in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on Jan. 6. … And I continue to be disappointed in the fact that the president has not seen his way clear to know that by God’s grace, we did our duty that day,” he said.
What happened at the Capitol turned into a breaking point, Pence said, despite his private conversations with Trump.
“When the president committed to a peaceful transfer of power [right after Jan. 6], when he condemned the violence at the Capitol, I thought we were back on track and in the week that followed we would we spoke, I was very direct with him about my experience, and my view of it, and my belief that I’d done my duty, and we parted amicably and respectfully,” he said. “But in the months that followed, he returned to that that same rhetoric he was using before Jan. 6, rhetoric that continues much up to this day, and that’s why we’ve gone our separate ways.”
In response to Pence’s Gridiron remarks, Trump told reporters that Pence shoulders some blame for the riot due to his refusal as president of the Senate to halt the certification of the presidential election results.
Trump also knocked Pence’s lagging popularity in surveys of Republican primary voters.
“I heard his statement, and I guess he decided that being nice isn’t working because he’s at 3% in the polls, so he figured he might as well not be nice any longer,” Trump told a group of reporters aboard his plane en route to Iowa last week.
GOP fissures on Ukraine
Trump is not the only other Republican with whom Pence has found noted disagreement. On Russia’s invasion, he contrasted his view with that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans like him who voice skepticism of U.S. aid to Ukraine as they fend off Russia’s invasion.
DeSantis recently called the invasion a “territorial dispute.” Pence stressed to Karl that he feels it is crucial to stand with the Ukrainians.
“The war in Ukraine is not a territorial dispute. It’s a Russian invasion. It’s just the latest instance of Russia attempting to redraw international lines by force,” he said, “and the United States of America must continue at a quickened pace to provide the Ukrainian military the support that they need to repel the Russian invasion, and the stakes are that high.”
Though he has said that there’s no room in the GOP for “Putin apologists,” Pence did not further criticize DeSantis by name. However, he did add that “there are voices in our party that don’t see a vital American interest in Ukraine, but I see it differently,” and he said he found DeSantis’ perspective on the matter “wrong.”
Karl asked Pence how he felt about Trump’s own recent Ukraine comments, calling for a cease-fire that might preserve the current status quo, with Russia in control of some Ukrainian land.
“Whether it’s President Trump or others in our party around the country, there are those who see some choice before us other than giving Ukraine the ability to fight and win against the Russian invasion. I believe it’s imperative that we stand firm,” Pence said, “that we continue to provide the Ukrainian military the resources that they need to repel the Russian invasion. And that will be the fastest way to secure peace and stability in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe.”
A potential Trump arrest
There is one major area where Pence and Trump see eye-to-eye: Trump’s possible arrest.
On his social media platform Saturday morning, Trump claimed that he would be taken into custody on Tuesday in connection with the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into alleged hush money paid to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump also called for his supporters to protest.
He has denied wrongdoing, including denying having an affair with Daniels, but has admitted he paid her — once defending it as “very common among celebrities and people of wealth.”
A Trump spokesperson appeared to walk back his arrest comments in a subsequent statement this weekend, saying in part that there had been no notification that Trump’s potential arrest was coming on Tuesday and that “Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system.”
Pence echoed that to Karl.
“It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here. And I, for my part, I just feel like it’s just not what the American people want to see,” he said.
He said he believes Trump is “innocent until proven guilty.”
Karl asked Pence about his reaction to Trump calling for protests should he be taken into custody — which echoed Trump’s push for protests leading up to and during Jan. 6
Pence did not disavow Trump’s call, citing that “the American people have a constitutional right to peaceably assemble” though he stressed that any demonstration should occur “peacefully and in a lawful manner.”
ABC News has not verified Trump’s claims.
While Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had no comment, he wrote in an email to staff obtained by ABC News that “we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
“I know that President Trump can take care of himself and — and this process will play out, if in fact an indictment comes down,” Pence told Karl. “But I just have to tell you that the politicization that we see … is deeply troubling to millions of Americans who want to see the equal treatment before the law.”
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Sunday pushed back on former President Donald Trump over his call to protest his potential arrest related to paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“Violence is never the right answer, and I always worry about it. But this is another case of Donald Trump just trying to advance the interests of Donald Trump, not of the rest of the nation,” Warren, D-Mass., told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
“Let’s be clear about what’s going on here: No one is above the law, not even the former president of the United States, and if there has been an investigation, and that investigation should be allowed to go forward appropriately, if it’s time to bring indictments, then they’ll bring indictments,” Warren said. “That’s how our legal system works.”
In a statement on social media on Saturday, Trump claimed he would be arrested on Tuesday and that his supporters should protest to “take our nation back.” A spokesperson later walked some of that back, saying the former president was merely “highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system” and that there was no notification of an imminent arrest.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating whether Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels — to allegedly cover up what Daniels claimed was an affair with Trump — constituted a violation of campaign finance law amid the 2016 election.
While Bragg’s office had no comment on Trump’s social media post, Bragg wrote in an email to staff obtained by ABC News that “we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
Trump has denied wrongdoing, including having an affair with Daniels, but has admitted he paid her, once defending it as “very common among celebrities and people of wealth.”
On “This Week” on Sunday, Warren said Trump was wrong to claim political persecution, a view echoed by his former vice president, Mike Pence, in a separate “This Week” sit-down.
“There’s no reason to protest this. This is the law operating as it should, without fear or favor for anyone,” Warren said.
Much of her interview was focused on the financial industry in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which led to the federal government stepping in to ensure all depositors at SVB received their money.
Karl pressed Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, on any consequences she believes should be meted out, including criminal charges, and whether she had learned from regulators if any other institutions were at risk.
She declined to speak about “private conversations” but said, “Let me be clear about what I’m calling for right now: I’m calling for an independent investigation of the [Federal Reserve] and the whole regulatory system here. The Fed doesn’t just get to do it.”
“Do you think we could see criminal charges?” Karl asked.
“It depends. … The Department of Justice has opened an investigation. I think that’s appropriate for them to do. We’ll see where the facts take them. But we’ve got to take a close look at this,” she said.
Warren reiterated her anger with what she described as the cycles of banking busts and bailouts and said it was time for the government to impose regulations on banks that are not among the biggest in the country but still hold billions of dollars in assets.
“I’m also calling on Congress … to roll back the ability of the Fed to weaken regulations and calling for these CEOs to be held accountable so that we have laws in place to get claw-backs of their bonuses, of their giant salaries. And, when you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever,” she said.
In particular, she singled out the recent history of lessening regulations on banks like SVB, urged on by executives like former President and CEO of SVB Greg Becker, who had played down the danger to the broader economy, she said.
Just days before his bank’s collapse, Becker sold more than $3.5 million of his company stock holdings while publicly appearing confident to investors, ABC News previously reported. (Becker has not responded to multiple requests for comment from ABC.)
“These big multibillion-dollar banks loaded up on risk, they boosted their short-term profits, they gave themselves huge bonuses and big salaries and they exploded their banks. And so, where we stand now is now the federal government’s got to step back in and back up these multibillion-dollar banks,” Warren said on “This Week.”
“And I think there’s two halves to this: One half is the government is clearly doing that. But there are a lot of people saying, ‘Gee, if they’ve been so lightly regulated for such a long period, it’s important to look under the hood and see what’s happening with the other banks.'”
Warren, however, declined to go after some of her fellow Democrats for supporting a deregulatory bill in 2018, saying she had no problem with removing stress tests for community banks but that regulations should be reimposed on larger institutions.
“You got more than $50 billion? Then by golly, you ought to be subjected to stress tests and decent capital requirements and so on,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Mike Pence indicated that he is not challenging all aspects of the subpoena issued last month by special counsel Jack Smith in his probe of the failed attempt by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence, who has argued that he is covered by the “speech and debate clause” that shields congressional officials from testimony related to their work, was pressed by ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl on whether he was objecting to every topic area covered by the subpoena.
“We’re not asserting executive privilege, which may encompass other discussions,” Pence told Karl in a sit-down for “This Week.”
Pence has invoked the speech and debate clause because in his role in Congress’ certification of the vote on Jan. 6, 2021, he was acting as president of the Senate and was a legislative branch member.
“I just believe that the work that I did preparing for and conducting on my role as President of the Senate is covered by the speech and debate clause. I believe we have the law on our side,” he told Karl.
But according to Pence’s subpoena — which has been described to ABC News by sources familiar with the document — there are a number of items that do not relate to Pence’s duty certifying the election, including documents and communications relating to efforts to contest the 2020 election and relating to Trump’s Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol attack.
The subpoena also asks for any documents and communications Pence has related to efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general, which critics say would have empowered Clark to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud. Clark emerged as a key player in Trump’s efforts to leverage the powers of DOJ to find widespread corruption in the 2020 electoral process after it became clear that Joe Biden had won the election.
Sources tell ABC News that the special counsel also wants information from Pence related to Trump attorney John Eastman and any communications Pence may have had with him or involving him. Eastman drafted a plan for Trump to cling to power by falsely claiming that Pence could reject legitimate electors during the certification on Jan. 6.
Investigators also want to know whether Pence had any communications with state or local officials related to any claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
Pence has vowed to fight the subpoena to the Supreme Court, if necessary, telling Karl, “We’re going to respect the decisions of the court, and that may take us all the way to the highest court in the land.”
Trump, for his part, is challenging Pence’s subpoena as well, but on the basis of executive privilege. The court battles, which are taking place out of public view, are shrouded in secrecy due to the confidential nature of the grand jury.
Pence’s subpoena was issued after months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence’s legal team.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform that he will be arrested on Tuesday related to the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
As part of the post, Trump also called on his supporters to protest.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson appeared to walk back the comments.
The spokesperson said there is no notification the DA “has decided to take his Witch-Hunt to the next level. President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system. He will be in Texas next weekend for a giant rally.”
Trump has not been charged with a crime in the probe.
ABC News has not verified the claims and the Manhattan district attorney’s office has no comment.
However in an email to staff, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said he would not be intimidated by calls for protest as he considers whether to make Trump the first former president to face criminal charges.
“We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York,” Bragg said in the emai obtained by ABC News.
The email was sent Saturday evening, hours after Trump posted on social media that he expected to be arrested.
Bragg’s email did not mention Trump by name but referenced “the ongoing press attention and public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”
Bragg told his staff their safety “is our top priority” and said the office “will continue to coordinate” with the NYPD and Office of Court Administration on matters of security.
“Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1600 of us have a secure work environment,” the email said. “I’m the meantime, as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., criticized the probe as politically motivated and said he’s directing relevant congressional committees to investigate whether New York prosecutors have federal funds.
“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” McCarthy tweeted Saturday. “I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence also called the probe a “politically charged prosecution” during a gaggle with reporters on Saturday in Iowa.
“The idea of indicting a former president of the United States is deeply troubling to me,” Pence said. He added, “I know, I know President Trump can take care of himself.”
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump’s statement Saturday calling for protests was “reckless.”
“Whatever the Grand Jury decides, its consideration makes clear: no one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States,” Pelosi tweeted. “The former president’s announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news & to foment unrest among his supporters.”
(NEW YORK) –Former President Donald Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform that he will be arrested on Tuesday related to the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
As part of the post, Trump also called on his supporters to protest.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson appeared to walk back the comments.
A Trump spokesperson said there is no notification the DA “has decided to take his Witch-Hunt to the next level. President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system. He will be in Texas next weekend for a giant rally.”
Trump has not been charged with a crime in the probe.
ABC News has not verified the claims and the Manhattan district attorney’s office has no comment.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
