Former President Donald Trump is expected to attend the wake this week for an NYPD officer who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in New York City on Monday, police sources told Spectrum News.
A spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who leads the county where Officer Jonathan Diller lived, confirmed he extended the invitation to the former president and spoke with him on Tuesday.
The wake for Diller, 31, is scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Massapequa Park, N.Y., on Long Island, according to the funeral home handling the visitation. His funeral is on Saturday. It was not immediately clear which day Trump planned on attending.
The Trump campaign did not immediately return a request for comment, but campaign spokesperson Karloine Leavitt told The New York Times that Trump was “moved by the invitation to join N.Y.P.D. Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death.”
“Our heartfelt prayers go out to the family of highly decorated NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, whose life was taken by a murderous career criminal yesterday during a traffic stop in Queens,” Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday. “The ‘thug’ in question has 21 prior arrests and just recently got out of prison - he NEVER should have been let back out on the streets.”
Diller and his partner were responding to a vehicle illegally parked at a bus stop in the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway on Monday evening when a suspect in the passenger seat pointed a gun at them and shot Diller, police said.
Diller's partner returned fire, hitting the gunman in the back, police said. The suspected gunman, Guy Rivera, remained hospitalized Thursday. On Wednesday night, Rivera was charged with first degree murder of a police officer, second degree murder, attempted murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Police on Wednesday arrested the driver of the car on weapons charges.
It was the first time an NYPD officer died on duty since January 2022. Diller had been with the NYPD for three years, police said. He leaves behind a wife and a 1-year-old son.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, called Diller's shooting “devastating” and said Tuesday, “These are bad people doing bad things to good people. It’s the good guys against the bad guys.” On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said flags at state government buildings would be lowered to half mast on Saturday, the day of Diller's funeral.
Trump, a native New Yorker and the 2024 GOP presumptive presidential nominee, has long highlighted crime in New York to needle Democratic officials who run the city and the state. He was also endorsed by two of New York City’s major police unions in 2020. And former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Georgia racketeering prosecution against Trump and his allies over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
While he now largely resides in Florida, Trump still owns numerous buildings and businesses in and around New York City. He has also spent much time in the city in recent months fighting his various criminal and civil cases. Jury selection is expected to begin on April 15 for his criminal trial in Manhattan. He has been charged with allegedly falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign made to cover up an extramarital affair.
“We have violent criminals that are murdering people, killing people. We have drug dealers all over the place, and they go free and they can do whatever they want, but they go after Trump with this not even a crime,” Trump said after a hearing in that case on Monday.
Spectrum News’ Deanna Garcia and Victoria Manna and The Associated Press contributed to this report.