Donald Trump's incendiary rhetoric over his expected indictment in New York could "get someone killed", the Democratic leader in the US House warned.
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"The twice-impeached former president's rhetoric is reckless, reprehensible and irresponsible," Hakeem Jeffries, from New York, told reporters at the Capitol in Washington.
"It's dangerous, and if he keeps it up, he's going to get someone killed."
Trump faces indictment in a Manhattan investigation of a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels claims an affair, which Trump denies.
Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, served jail time after admitting making the payment shortly before the presidential election in 2016, then being reimbursed by Trump when Trump was president. Trump first denied then admitted the payment. Cohen is now a key witness in the Manhattan case. Trump claims the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is politically and racially motivated. Bragg, a Democrat and the first Black man to fill the prestigious post, is believed to be considering charges including falsification of business records, campaign finance violations and tax fraud.
Trump has falsely predicted his own arrest, mused on wanting to be seen handcuffed and called for supporters to protest. Security preparations have been made around the courthouse in lower Manhattan but no serious protest has emerged.
On Thursday, Trump upped the ante, using his Truth Social platform to post a composite picture of himself wielding a baseball bat next to Bragg.
Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics tsar now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, responded: “Threatening a prosecutor is a crime in New York. In fact MULTIPLE crimes: Harassment in the first degree … menacing in the second degree … stalking in the fourth or third degree … and that’s just for starters.”
But Trump kept going. Early on Friday, he claimed “potential death and destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country”.
He also called Bragg “a degenerate psychopath that truly [sic] hates the USA”.