The potential indictment in the hush money case is concerning Trump and his advisers

The 2020 2020 presidential campaign: a political drama with an ex-president and 2024 presidential candidate whose abuses of power have been exposed by a grand jury

Trump’s prediction on Saturday that he could be arrested this week – and his attempt to ignite a preemptive backlash – made what had been the theoretical prospect of an ex-president and 2024 candidate being criminally charged appear much more real. It signaled that America is headed towards another politically divisive debacle that will test his influence over the GOP.

What’s the big deal? A grand jury is examining Trump’s personal role in the hush money payments to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, over an alleged affair.

Law enforcement officials involved in the discussions have stressed the need to prepare for a complicated surrender and court appearance if an indictment is ever issued. A law enforcement official said that Federal, state, and local law enforcement met in New York City to discuss the planning.

Attorney Robert Costello, at the request of Trump’s legal team, testified Monday for nearly three hours in front of the grand jury in an effort to discredit the testimony of the former president’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, who has admitted to paying $130,000 to Daniels just before the 2016 election to stop her from going public about an alleged affair with the former president.

But the ex-president launched a characteristic effort to discredit attempts to call him to account, trying to intimidate prosecutors, mobilize his grassroots supporters and pressure top GOP officials to rally to his side. Every American has a constitutional right to political self-expression, but the ex-president’s call this weekend for his loyalists – “Protest, take our nation back” – struck an ominous tone since he showed on January 6, 2021, that he was willing to incite violence to further his interests.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba told CNN’s Paula Reid Sunday there would be serious consequences if Trump were to be indicted for a mere misdemeanor – one possible outcome of the Manhattan probe. “It is going to cause mayhem, Paula. I mean, it’s just a very scary time in our country,” Habba said. But she also said that “no one wants anyone to get hurt” and Trump supporters should be “peaceful.”

In the age of Donald Trump, an indictment would test the principle of the Republican Party that it is so important to appease his supporters in order to save their political careers.

Trump’s effort to politicize the case and to distract from the allegations against him has already worked as his top allies in Republican House leadership attack Bragg.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday called it “the weakest case out there.” The Californian who ordered the committees to investigate said he had spoken to the Ohio congressman who was looking at the weaponization of the government against political opponents.

McCarthy told reporters that people shouldn’t protest around any announcement of an indictment. He added, “We want calmness out there. No one hurt, violence or harm to anything else.

Further underscoring Trump’s firm hold on the GOP base, his social media post prompted several of his Republican critics to line up beside him. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is mulling a campaign to challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination, told ABC News, “It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here. I feel like it’s not what American people want to see.

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said it is time for Republicans to move on from Trump, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” the Bragg investigation was “building a lot of sympathy for the former president.” He added: “I (had) coffee this morning with some folks, and none of them were big Trump supporters, but they all said they felt like he was being attacked.”

There would be more than one legal problem for Trump, and his most serious would be a charge in the Daniels case. Justice Department probes into his role in the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election are still expanding. A grand jury investigated the circumstances of Biden’s win in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said at the end of January that decisions in the inquiry were “imminent.” While an indictment in New York might be seen as politically invigorating for Trump’s campaign, it’s hard to see how a crush of charges or trials in multiple cases would allow him to concentrate fully on a credible presidential bid.

— There is also the issue of whether the political division and trauma of putting Trump on trial would be in the wider national interest — at least in a fairly constrained case that seems to hold fewer lasting constitutional implications than those connected to the January 6 investigations. History will not be happy with any failed prosecution.

The fact that the Daniels case dates back to an election that is now more than six years old, even as the nation faces another White House campaign, could also raise questions for the public, especially given the uncertainty about the case for anyone outside the small bubble of the investigation. Kelly told Jake Tapper that nobody in the nation should be above the law. But he also said: “I would hope that, if they brought charges, that they have a strong case, because this is … unprecedented. And there are certainly risks involved here.”

Kelly commented on how Trump is breaking the mold when it comes to presidents and ex-presidents in national life eight years after he burst onto the scene with an upstart presidential campaign. He again may be about to leap to the center, in the most contentious of ways, of the national psyche and political debate.

CNN takes a closer look at the legal drama surrounding Donald Trump. Watch “CNN Primetime: Inside the Trump Investigations” Tuesday, March 21 at 9 p.m. ET.

Officials in New York and Washington, DC, are preparing for potential protests as a grand jury empaneled as part of the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels continues to weigh possible charges.

According to a memo shared with CNN, all NYPD officers will be in uniform and ready for deployment Tuesday, the day after the grand jury Meeting in New York City. Law enforcement officials told CNN that although Tuesday is a “high alert day,” there is currently no credible threat.

The memo was sent after Trump called on his supporters to protest in response to a potential arrest, as well as calls he made for protests in Washington, DC, following his 2020 election loss. The US Capitol Police force is not currently tracking any threats to the US Capitol, according to the intelligence assessment obtained by CNN.

The indictment of Donald J. Cohen in the House Select Committee on Elections, Justice, and Electoral Freedom: Media coverage of the response to a press conference

According to a statement provided to CNN by Cohen’s lawyer, Cohen was not required to be a rebuttal witness Monday.

On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, House Oversight Committee Chair Jim Comer, R-Ky., and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil sent Bragg a letter demanding documents, communications and testimony about his.

A spokesperson for Bragg responded by saying that the district attorney’s team “will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.”

“In every prosecution, we follow the law without fear or favor to uncover the truth. The lawyers remain hard at work, the spokesman said.

According to three chairmen, a possible indictment was “an unprecedented use of prosecutorial authority and one that federal authorities did not want to pursue.”

They expect him to be in Congress soon, but they did not give a date for the hearing. Bragg was given a Thursday deadline by which to set up an appearance.

House Republicans are huddling at their annual retreat in Orlando, Fla., and the former president, who is running for the GOP nomination in 2024, is dominating the conversation.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fielded several questions about Trump at a press conference Sunday evening, and largely focused his response on attacking Bragg’s tenure and legal approach, instead of defending Trump’s behavior.

McCarthy said that one of the reasons they won races in New York was because the district attorney didn’t protect the citizens of New York. “And the statute of limitations are gone.” He added about an indictment: “This will not hold up in court, if this is what he wants to do.”

Bragg’s probe: How close is it? The new twist in the case of Markovian president Donald Trump and his lawyer Joseph Tacopina

As House Republicans sought to showcase their legislative agenda in the majority, questions about Trump continued to be front and center — a dynamic they struggled with during his time in the White House.

The first question at the press conference was about Bragg’s probe. “It certainly smells like it’s political,” said Carlos Gimenez, as he told reporters.

Behind the doors of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump and his advisers are preparing for several different scenarios relating to a possible indictment from the Manhattan grand jury.

Two advisers said that the former president appears to have resigned himself to the likelihood of an indictment, with one close adviser calling his perceived distancing from the matter “compartmentalization.”

In the latest twist in the case, CNN reported exclusively Tuesday evening that communications between Daniels and an attorney who is now representing Trump have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The exchanges – said to date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking representation – raise the possibility that the Trump attorney, Joe Tacopina, could be sidelined from Trump’s defense.

CNN has not seen the records in question, and Tacopina denies that there is a conflict or that confidential information was shared with his office. He said he didn’t meet or speak to Daniels. The impact of disclosure will depend on the circumstances and substance of the communications.

According to the first report of the finding by ABC News, it makes clear for the first time that the Justice Department has evidence that Trump committed a crime. And Howell ruled that prosecutors met the burden to overcome Trump’s right to shield discussions with his lawyers normally protected under attorney-client privilege.

Trump’s Call for Action against the Wall-String Attack: Why the Special Counsel Investigation didn’t stop at the Capitol, saying he was going to Washington

Trump is scheduled to travel to Waco, Texas, on Saturday for his first major campaign rally since announcing his third presidential bid, though an adviser questioned whether an indictment from the New York grand jury could derail those plans.

Over the weekend, Trump on his social media page called for protests of what he said was his impending arrest. He moved away from that language recently after allies and advisers called for him to tone down his rhetoric.

Still, federal officials, including those at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, are monitoring what they say has been an uptick in violent rhetoric online, including calls for “civil war,” since Trump made those calls. US officials and security experts tell CNN that so far it has lacked actionable information, coordination and volume prior to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

As speculation mounts that former President Donald Trump could soon be indicted over hush money payments to an adult film actress in 2016, Alvin Bragg may have to make a history-making decision.

It is obvious that this is not a real thing. And something that we want to know: were federal funds involved? It looks like it stems from the special counsel investigation, because we have legislative concerns that are related to that.