Donald Trump, escalating attacks, raises specter of violence if he is charged

In an overnight social media post, former President Donald Trump predicted that “potential death and destruction” may result if, as expected, he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, in connection with hush-money payments to a porn star made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Hours later, the district attorney’s office discovered a threatening letter addressed to Bragg containing white powder — later determined not to be dangerous — in its mailroom.

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 Bragg, before 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 truely hates the USA!” the former president wrote.

Bragg is weighing charges against Trump in connection with hush money his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid late in the 2016 campaign cycle to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.

The grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the case does not typically meet on Fridays, and an indictment is not expected until next week at the earliest. Although there have been several signals that Bragg’s office is close to an indictment, the exact timing of any charges remains unknown.

Around midday Friday, a threatening letter containing a suspicious white powder was found in the mailroom for the district attorney’s office, which is in the building where the grand jury meets, a spokesperson for the Police Department said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said that Bragg had informed the office that the powder was immediately contained “and that the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection determined there was no dangerous substance.” In that message, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, the office’s leadership assured prosecutors that “we are well-prepared for any possibility.”

The envelope in which it was sent was addressed to Bragg, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The person said that inside the envelope was a single piece of white paper with a brief message containing the typewritten words “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU” followed by 13 exclamation points.

The district attorney’s office did not comment on Trump’s social media post. In an email to his staff last week, Bragg wrote that the office would “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 by a pro-Trump mob that he had just addressed 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.

“Our country is being destroyed as they tell us to be peaceful,” Trump said in a post Thursday.

That day, Trump also posted an article about the investigation that featured a large picture of the former president holding a baseball bat, juxtaposed with an image of Bragg. The image was widely interpreted as menacing. On Friday, the social media post was deleted from Trump’s feed on Truth Social.

Trump has also attacked Bragg for having received indirect financial support from billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

So far, Trump’s calls for protests have been largely ignored, with just handfuls of people coming out for a demonstration Monday organized by some of his New York Republican allies.

In a statement published Friday in Politico’s New York Playbook newsletter, a group of civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Gov. David Paterson, condemned Trump’s statements.

“This disgraceful attack is not a dog whistle but a bullhorn of incendiary racist and antisemitic bile, spewed out for the sole purpose of intimidating and sabotaging a lawful, legitimate, fact-based investigation,” they said. “These ugly, hateful attacks on our judicial system must be universally condemned.”