Trump lawyer distanced himself from clients' escalating attacks on Manhattan DA

Donald Trump's lawyer on Sunday distanced himself from his clients' escalating attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as he weighs criminal charges against the former president.

Joe Tacopina is not his social media consultant, but he said when pressed by host Chuck Todd whether he would advise a client to personally attack a prosecutor, in an interview on NBC News Meet the Press. That was an ill-advised post that one of his social media people put up and he quickly took down when he realized the rhetoric and the folder attached to it. Todd said you're referring to the baseball bat, which was featured in The New York Post cover. The New York Post thought it was a pretty rough hit. Trump has stepped up his inflammatory rhetoric against government officials after falsely predicted last weekend that he would be arrested Tuesday for a hush money payment made during his 2016 campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Bragg is looking into how payments were documented on the books of the Trump OrganizationTrump Organization.

On Thursday, Trump called Bragg an animal backed the liberal megadonor George Soros, who is Jewish, in a post to his social media platform Truth Social. In another Truth Social posting he appears to have shared an article that contained an image of himself wielding a baseball bat next to an image of Bragg's head. That post has been deleted. Trump warned early Friday of his potential death and destruction if he is charged in the hush money case.

Trump has stated that he committed no wrongdoing.

I am not going to defend or condemn anything regarding social media. That is not what I do, Tacopina said Sunday. I am not a Trump PR person. I don't have anything to do. I'm a lawyer and a litigator, and I'm talking about this case in Manhattan. The FBI and NYPD are investigating a letter containing a death threat and white powder mailed to Bragg's office, the latest in a series of threats aimed at Bragg and his office in recent weeks, according to a senior law enforcement source.