Trump and Republican leaders may have just made law enforcement’s job harder

In a Truth Social post on Saturday in which he claimed he’ll be arrested by New York officials Tuesday for hush money he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels, former President Donald Trump called for his supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Trump’s post is one of the reasons we need to be concerned about whether in response to any of the criminal investigations he faces, violent extremists will mobilize on his behalf as they did Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump’s potential indictment by a Manhattan grand jurypotential indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, and potential indictment by federal grand juries mean our law enforcement and security agencies — and, in fact, our very rule of law — could be sorely tested. For example, on March 8, Vice News reported that the violent domestic extremist group Boogaloo Boys has been ramping up its radicalization and recruitment efforts in the hopes of sparking an anti-government civil war and that the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August helped spark the group’s online recruitment efforts. The challenges go beyond securing any individual courthouse and include whether local, county, state and federal law enforcement can withstand — better yet, prevent — another violent assault on our system from domestic extremists driven by allegiance to a twice impeached former president.