As cops in New York City and Washington DC are preparing for possible unrest in the event of Donald Trump being indicted over allegations he paid hush money to a porn star startling new images have emerged appearing to show the former president being arrested.
However, the shocking scenes of Trump being tackled to the ground by police officers, are not real but have in fact been created using AI technology by Bellingcat journalist Eliot Higgins, reports British Media Daily Mail.
Some of the fake images show Trump being chased down the street by police officers while his wife Melania screams. Others show the former President in jail wearing an orange jumpsuit.
The sequence shows Trump being arrested, on trial in an orange jumpsuit and has been created using Midjourney v5 artificial intelligence image generators. The images have since gone viral on Twitter with many users saying they thought the pictures were real at first.
'Legit thought these were real,' one person tweeted, while another said: 'we should really be putting watermarks on these that disclose they are AI-generated and not real.'
It comes after Trump claimed without evidence that he was going to be arrested today and called on his supporters to 'protest, protest, protest' in response to a possible indictment over the former president's alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Amid fears of protests and unrest, police officers are out in full force in New York City - where a grand jury is deliberating over the hush money allegations - and in Washington DC, a city mindful of the riot by Trump loyalists at the Capitol building two years ago.
Trump has declared himself the victim of a 'Stormy ''Horse Face'' Daniels extortion plot', saying he's being targeted by a series of 'horrible radical left Democrat' investigations.
Trump said on Truth Social last night: 'They are not coming after me - they are coming after you. I'm just standing in their way. And I always will stand in their way.'
Many lawmakers and politicians on both sides of the aisle have said no one wants a repeat of Jan. 6 – with Republicans claiming they don't expect the demonstrations to turn violent, but warned instead of a 'political circus' surrounding any potential indictment.
Trump's arrest is believed to be imminent because he was offered the chance this week to speak to the grand jury about the $130,000 payments, made just before the election, but declined to testify.
The former president's lawyers enlisted Robert Costello, a lawyer with close ties to numerous key Trump aides including Michael Cohen, to testify against Cohen.
He was invited by prosecutors to appear after saying that he had information to undercut the credibility of Cohen, a former lawyer and fixer for Trump who later turned against him and then became a key witness in the Manhattan district attorney's investigation.
Costello had provided Cohen legal services several years ago after Cohen himself became entangled in the federal investigation into the hush money payments. In a news conference after his grand jury appearance, Costello told reporters that he had come forward because he did not believe Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal crimes and served time in prison, could be trusted.
'If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, then so be it,' Costello said. 'But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence.'
Responding to Costello's claims on MSNBC later Monday, Cohen said that Costello was never his lawyer and 'he lacks any sense of veracity.'
'It is being said that disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen was put out to dry today after his highly respected former attorney and legal adviser, Robert Costello, made a great impression not only on the D.A.'s Office, but the grand jury itself,' Trump wrote.
'He is known to be a great lawyer and highly honourable man. He stated to the media that he could no longer listen to the lies that Cohen was spreading. He told the TRUTH, with papers, documents, and backup. He left ZERO doubt.
He said: 'These four horrible radical left Democrat investigations of your all-time favourite president - me - is just a continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country.
'It's gone on forever, with Russia, Russia, Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, and the Mueller hoax. It's an absolute disgrace what's going on. They even spied on my campaign.
'And remember this: with all of the work that they did on Mueller - no collusion. That's what the answer was. It was all, no collusion.'
Trump told his supporters he was being attacked by 'sick' prosecutors determined to bring him down, insisting he was seen as a threat to Democrat power and needed to be stopped.
The former president added: 'Whether it's the Mar-a-Lago raid or the unselect committee hoax, the perfect Georgia phone call - it was absolutely perfect - or the Stormy 'Horse Face' Daniels extortion plot, they are all sick.
'And it's fake news. Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them.
'And they know it, very strongly. And they are looking at the polls where, not me, but we, are up by so much. They can't even believe it.'
Trump, who declared in November that he was running for re-election in 2024, told his followers that they needed to return him to the White House.
