WASHINGTON - Former US president Donald Trump warned of potential “death & destruction” if he faces criminal charges, hours after New York prosecutors probing his hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels said they would not be intimidated.

The early Friday post on Trump’s Truth Social media site was the latest in a string of verbal attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg since last Saturday, when Mr Trump wrongly predicted he would be arrested three days later.

Mr Trump falsely claims his defeat in 2020 was the result of fraud - a claim that inspired his followers to launch a deadly Jan 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying the election of Democratic President Joe Biden, who bested the Republican Mr Trump by more than seven million votes.

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?“ wrote Mr Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Mr Bragg’s office, in a letter to Republican committee chairmen in Congress on Thursday, challenged their standing to investigate his office and said Mr Trump had “created a false expectation that he would be arrested” in his Saturday post.

The letter called the chairmen’s request for communications, documents and testimony an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”

Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has sa...