Mr. Trump made the declaration on his site, Truth Social, at 7:26 a.m. on Saturday in a post that ended with, “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”
Two hours later, a spokesman issued a statement saying that Mr. Trump had not written his post with direct knowledge of the timing of any arrest, adding, “President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system.”
But Mr. Trump’s social media post had immediate impact: Within hours, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, one of the most powerful people in federal government and who partly owes his position to Mr. Trump, posted on Twitter that he was calling for investigations into whether federal funds were being used for “politically motivated prosecutions,” a thinly veiled threat to Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Prosecutors working for Mr. Bragg have signaled that an indictment of Mr. Trump could be imminent. But they have not told Mr. Trump’s lawyers when the charges — expected to stem from a 2016 hush money payment to a porn star — would be sought or an arrest made, people with knowledge of the matter said. At least one more witness is expected to testify in front of the grand jury, which could delay an indictment, the people said.
One of the people said that even if the grand jury were to vote to indict the former president on Monday, a Tuesday surrender was unlikely, given the need to arrange timing, travel and other logistics.
The statement from Mr. Trump’s spokesman did not explain how he had landed on Tuesday as an arrest date. One person with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump’s advisers had guessed that it could happen around then, and that someone might have relayed that to the former president.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Susan R. Necheles, said that his post had been based on news reports, and accused the Manhattan district attorney’s office of conducting a “political prosecution.”
Mr. Trump, who declared his third presidential campaign in November and is leading his Republican opponents in most polls, faced his first criminal investigation in the late 1970s. He has been deeply anxious about the prospect of an arrest, which is expected to include being fingerprinted, one of the people said.
When the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, was arrested in 2021, Mr. Trump watched in horror as television news showed Mr. Weisselberg flanked by officers in the courthouse, and the former president said he couldn’t believe what was happening.
Mr. Trump’s post on Saturday urging his supporters to protest and reclaim the nation carried unmistakable echoes of the incendiary messages he posted online in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the most notorious of those messages, posted on Dec. 19, 2020, he announced on Twitter that he would hold a rally in Washington on Jan. 6. “Be there,” he told his millions of followers. “Will be wild.”
At that rally, on the Ellipse near the White House, Mr. Trump told supporters to march to the Capitol, where the certification of the 2020 presidential election was taking place. He is under investigation by federal prosecutors for his activities before the attack.
Investigators later determined that far-right extremist groups as well as ordinary Trump supporters had read his tweet as a clear-cut invitation. They almost immediately sprang into action, acquiring protective gear, setting up encrypted communications channels and, in one case, preparing heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington for the event.
Leaders of groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenter militia movement also started to whip up members with bellicose language, and their private messaging channels were increasingly filled with plans to rush to Mr. Trump’s aid.
On Friday evening, Mr. Trump’s campaign announced what could be his first rally after an indictment: an event in Waco, Texas, where deadly clashes between federal officials and an extremist religious sect occurred 30 years ago around this time.
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