(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing for a “spectacle” should he be indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but believes that such a visual could be the best thing for his 2024 campaign.
According to The Guardian, Trump rejected a proposal by the Secret Service to voluntarily turn himself in to prosecutors in a discreet location to avoid media attention. He said he didn’t care if the arrest was public, or even if someone tried to shoot him during it, because then he would become “a martyr” and easily win the 2024 presidential election, the report alleged.
Trump also reportedly told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed if he has to make an in-person court appearance, saying that if he is going to be fingerprinted and taken in for a mug shot, he might as well use the event to benefit his campaign.
Amidst the looming threat of an indictment, Trump’s support among voters has surged. A new Morning Consult poll shows him leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 54% to 26%.
Republicans have blasted Bragg for abusing the justice system to go after Trump. On Wednesday, Bragg was accused by Robert Costello, the former legal adviser of key witness Michael Cohen, of withholding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence from the grand jury.
According to Costello, the grand jury had received only “six cherry-picked documents” of the tranche of files that he had handed over to Bragg, Becker News reported.
House Republicans sent a letter to Bragg this week demanding that he appear before Congress to explain his political prosecution of Trump.
“In light of the serious consequences of your actions, we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in the letter.
An indictment of Trump, the letter continued, “will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the court of the 2024 presidential election.”
