Grand juries probe former president

Trump is scheduled to travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for what his campaign has billed as the first official rally of his 2024 presidential bid.

The kickoff event, which comes months after Trump formally launched his third White House campaign, coincides with the 30-year anniversary of the infamous siege that took place east of Waco.

The standoff between FBI agents and members of the Branch Davidians religious cult began in February 1993 and ended nearly two months later in a deadly blaze that engulfed the group’s compound. Dozens of the group’s followers — and its leader, David Koresh — were killed in the siege, as were four federal agents.

Trump’s campaign has not linked his rally with the tragic anniversary. In a press release announcing the event, the campaign declared, “It is undisputed that Texas is Trump Country,” pointing to the success of Trump-endorsed candidates in the state and some favorable polling data on Texas Republicans.

Trump’s spokesman told The New York Times that the site was selected “because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas’ biggest metropolitan areas.”

The rally comes at the close of a week in which Trump wrongly predicted he would be arrested on charges from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office related to a 2016 hush money payment to a porn star who alleges she had a tryst with Trump. The former president has railed against the DA and portrayed himself as a victim of government overreach.

Trump is scheduled to speak at the rally at the Waco Regional Airport at 5 p.m. local time on Saturday.

— Kevin Breuninger

After ramping up his campaign of vitriol against the Manhattan district attorney pursuing a hush money case against him, Trump left his Palm Beach, Florida, resort home and headed to his golf club, NBC News reported.

The former president’s motorcade arrived at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach shortly after 9 a.m. ET, according to NBC.

Around the same time, Trump posted a two-word, all-caps message on Truth Social: “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!”

It was the latest in a series of escalating attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which had reached a fever pitch overnight as Trump warned of “potential death & destruction” if charged in the probe.

— Kevin Breuninger

The lawyer for Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-fixer turned key witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s hush money case, said he would be let down if the former president is not charged in the probe.

“I’ll be disappointed” if the DA Alvin Bragg ultimately decides not to indict Trump, attorney Lanny Davis told Politico.

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

Davis also told Politico that the probe began after he invited the former Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance Jr., to visit Cohen in prison in Otisville, New York, where he was serving his sentence for financial crimes related to the hush money payment.

Their first meeting “did not go very well,” Davis said, because Cohen had felt “mistreated” by federal prosecutors. But “they got past that,” and “the next two sessions were very productive. And then it led to an open investigation.”

— Kevin Breuninger

Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Trump, arrived at a Washington, D.C., courthouse ahead of a planned appearance before a federal grand jury reviewing evidence of Trump’s retention of classified government records at his Florida home.

Corcoran’s arrival came two days after an appeals court quickly denied a bid by Trump to block the lawyer’s appearance, which a lower court judge had ordered.

The Justice Department is eyeing Trump in the criminal probe for failing to comply with a law requiring former presidents to return government records when they leave office.

He also is being investigated for potential obstruction of justice in refusing to turn over records to government officials when lawyers including Corcoran were being asked about such documents.

Last June, Corcoran told a fellow Trump lawyer Christina Bobb to give the DOJ a statement that an extensive search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club had not found any more government documents than the ones returned to the National Archives and Records Administration earlier in 2022.

Two months later, FBI agents in a raid of Mar-a-Lago found hundreds of such documents, many of them marked highly classified.

— Dan Mangan

Trump in an ominous early-morning social media post suggested there could be “death & destruction” if he is hit with criminal charges.

The implication of violence came more than two years after thousands of the former president’s supporters, spurred by his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, stormed the Capitol in a deadly attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump in his Truth Social post cited his status as a former president and a current White House contender as he lashed out at an unnamed prosecutor. He argued that any criminal charge against him would be baseless.

“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?”

“Why & who would do such a thing?” he added. “Only a degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA.”

The post came hours after a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the jury in Trump’s upcoming civil trial for allegations that he raped and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll would be anonymous. The decision was in part due to Trump’s verbal and written attacks on legal system officials such as prosecutors, as well as individual grand jurors.

Trump faces a potential indictment next week in the Manhattan grand jury probe related to the Stormy Daniels hush money payment. Daniels’ real name is Stephanie Clifford.

He also is the target of a federal criminal probe related to efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Biden, and his actions surrounding the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot by his supporters after he urged them to protest the election results in Washington.

— Dan Mangan