WASHINGTON (London Post with Reuters) – Ahead of the expected New York indictment, former President Donald Trump’s call for protests received little response from his supporters, with some of his most ardent supporters. even dismissed the idea as a waste of time or a trap for law enforcement.
Despite being the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election and having a loyal following, mobilizing far-right supporters the way he did before June 6, over two years ago. Ambiguity raises the question of whether Trump still holds power. January 2021, United States Capitol uprising. It also suggests that the hundreds of arrests that followed the Capitol riot, not to mention the convictions and lengthy prison sentences, may have dampened the desire to repeat the large-scale riot.
Still, law enforcement in New York continues to closely monitor online chat alerts for protests and violence in the event Trump is arrested, with threats of varying accuracy and credibility, four officials said, according to the AP. told communications. The messages, which were mostly published online and in chat groups, included calls for armed protesters to block law enforcement officers and try to prevent possible arrests, officials said.
Ali Alexander, who organized the Stop Theft campaign, which holds rallies to promote Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that the Democrats stole the 2020 election from him, told Trump supporters that they could move to New York. He warned that protesting in the city would result in “imprisonment or worse.”
“There is no freedom, no rights there,” he tweeted.
One of Alexander’s allies in the Stop the Steel campaign was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who reinforced allegations of voter fraud on his Infowars show.Alexander spoke with Jones and said that neither would protest this time.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab who has tracked the “Stop the Steal” movement online, said anxiety over being entrapped by so-called agent provocateurs feeds a “paranoia that if they go and do violence, they may get caught and there may be consequences.”
A grand jury is investigating hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump. Prosecutors have not said when their work might conclude or when charges could come.
The conflicted feelings over how far to support Trump in his fight against prosecution extends into the political realm. His own vice president, Mike Pence, who’s expected to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination, castigated Trump in an ABC News interview this weekend as “reckless” for his actions on Jan. 6 and said history would hold him accountable — even as he echoed the former president’s rhetoric that an indictment would be a “politically charged prosecution.”
The opening day of the House Republican conference in Orlando, Florida, was quickly overshadowed with the news of a potential indictment. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans called the odds dire and criticized District Attorney Alvin Bragg for what he described as a “reckless crime” in New York City.
McCarthy said he has assembled congressional investigators to investigate whether Bragg used Justice Department grants to prosecute Trump’s case. But despite the fierce rhetoric against Bragg, Republican leaders fell short of Trump’s call to protesters to “take back our country.”
“I don’t think people should protest about that. I don’t think President Trump thinks like that when you’re talking to him,” McCarthy said.
