When Donald Trump was indicted in Manhattan in March on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, his supporters rallied around him.
Backed by former and current Republicans — including some who challenged him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination — Trump’s lead in national polls of members of his own party came after he pleaded not guilty to charges in New York state. Support soared in state courts.
Now, Trump faces an even bigger test of his political strength in an unprecedented second indictment, this time of federal criminal charges involving his handling of classified documents discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
When Trump appears before a judge in Miami, Fla., on Tuesday, he will fight charges involving national security, which could be harder for the former president to defend in court and on the campaign trail.
The case has the potential to upend not only Trump’s political prospects but also the way Americans view the federal justice system, as the former president eyes a growing list of legal challenges and a group of loyal supporters appears to be Unmoved.
The latest charges underscore the unprecedented nature of Trump’s re-election bid in the White House, the first former president to face criminal charges and the first former commander in chief to seek a second term in more than a century. Oval Office.
The pending legal case does not prevent Trump from seeking another four years in office, and he has repeatedly vowed to stay on the campaign trail while fighting the charges.
Trump has established himself as the undisputed front-runner in a wide field of 2024 Republican candidates. He has the support of slightly more than half of Republican voters nationwide, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a distant second at about 22 percent, according to an average compiled by RealClearPolitics. The remaining candidates, including former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and anti-ESG investor Vivek Ramaswamy, all languished in the single digits.
Election experts doubt whether the latest allegations will dent Trump’s support among a traditionally loyal Republican base that will pick the party’s 2024 nominee.
“It probably won’t change anything, at least with the Republican nomination,” said Larry Sabato of the nonpartisan University of Virginia Center for Politics. “We’ve been through this many times . . . I’ve learned that what is serious to many of us is trivial to millions of Americans.”
News of the latest indictment was as defiant as ever for Trump, portraying himself as a victim of a witch hunt. In an interview with Fox Digital News on Thursday night, he called the allegations “election interference at the highest level” and “the largest witch hunt of all time,” declaring his “total innocence.”
The Trump campaign quickly went into overdrive, attacking Jack Smith, the U.S. special counsel who has been leading the investigation into Trump. Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith to oversee investigations into the former president, including the pending probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Trump and his campaign have accused U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, of orchestrating a campaign to discredit his former — and likely future — opponent at the ballot box. “By politically weaponizing the Justice Department, the Biden administration and its followers in the swamp are now pursuing sweeping indictments of political opposition leaders from the current administration,” the Trump campaign said.
Trump and his allies have also noted that Biden has also been the subject of a separate investigation into his own handling of classified documents dating back to his tenure as vice president.
The looming federal charges in Florida may not be the last legal trouble the former president faces. Trump is the subject of another federal investigation into his role in the Jan. 6 incident and in Georgia into whether he tried to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.
The Trump campaign sought to use the anticipated allegations as a fundraising opportunity, calling on supporters to donate to his campaign. “With your support, we will soar again and prove that our America First movement is truly unstoppable,” Trump said in a fundraising email.
Trump also has sympathy from his Republican opponents. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement poses a mortal threat to free societies,” DeSantis tweeted Thursday, lamenting the “unequal application of the law depending on political affiliation.”
Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa earlier in the day, Pence said the federal prosecution would be “extremely divisive” and “send a terrible message to the wider world” with the hypothetical charges happening in a second. “.
Ramaswamy offered Trump more of his full support. “It would have been much easier for me to win this election if Trump hadn’t run, but I advocate principles over politics. I promise to pardon Trump immediately on January 20, 2025, and restore the rule of law in our country,” he said. said in a statement.
Sabato said Trump’s Republican opponents are still pinning their hopes on the former president’s legal woes, which could take him out of the race in the long run.
“They’re shedding crocodile tears, and if he gets brought down, they’ll still be doing it, talking about how vile and horrible the prosecutor is,” Sabato added. “All the while, they were secretly excited.”