WASHINGTON — Unnamed Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is facing a question he couldn’t have imagined a few years ago: How many criminal charges does a party leader have to face before using him is politically acceptable?
Less than 10 months away from when the first primary elections were held, the former president who attempted a coup has so far fought his rivals to avoid using what not long ago would be the strongest argument against him.
“No one has given any indication that they plan to punish Trump in any way,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who has long criticized Trump. “So I can only assume that they will support him through additional charges – if they don’t have to and it’s just a repeat of the same dynamic in 2016.”
After the Manhattan district attorney unsealed 34 felony counts against Trump last week, only one of the dozen or so candidates and potential candidates suggested that they were a significant problem for him: former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
And even he downplayed the seriousness of the indictment of the state court – although it is based on the same set of facts that led to the guilty plea of crime and time in federal prison for former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
Kevin Madden, a Republican consultant who worked on the 2012 presidential campaign of current-Sen. Mitt Romney, said he doesn’t know how Trump’s rival could beat him if he refused to participate.
“You have to distinguish yourself from the field, based on your credentials, vision, competence and electability,” he said. “You can hardly do it when your enemy is accused and then you defend him.”
Trump supporters have almost uniformly claimed that Alvin Bragg’s accusations are unfair and “politically motivated,” with the DA pushing an “agenda” backed by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Even some of Trump’s critics in the Republican Party say that the charges will not only allow him to gather support from a voting base that may be open to alternative candidates, but will help him fight criticism if he is indicted for the 2021 coup attempt and hoarding. The top secret document arrived.
“I’m worried that the order of the case will make it more difficult for the Republican Party to speak against Trump in future impeachments,” said Lucy Caldwell, who is running the primary challenge of former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh against Trump in 2020.
Other Republicans, however, say voters are smart enough to distinguish between weaker, years-old cases and the possibility of more serious charges, and that other candidates may tune in to that message.
“When you have everyone from Mitt Romney to Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same page, there’s not much to do, but to get involved,” said GOP consultant Scott Jennings, contrasting the anti-Trump Utahan with a Trump-promoting Georgia congresswoman. , both Republicans. “Future cases may be more serious and warrant a different strategy.”
Marc Short, an adviser to potential 2024 candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, said Trump’s problems with criminal investigations are just beginning, and he expects the other candidates to become a problem as the race progresses, especially when televised debates begin this summer.
“There will be many such opportunities,” he said. “I don’t know how this conversation didn’t make it to the debate stage.”
But Trump’s staunchest GOP critics fear he has accomplished what he wants by forcing his rivals to fall victim to unfair prosecutions to get him.
“It can’t be half-pregnant. Going back to ‘Access Hollywood,’ there is no safe middle ground in politics,” said Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, referring to the 2016 scandal over leaked tapes of Trump boasting that celebrities allowed him to do so. grab a woman by her genitals.
“There’s no place to say, ‘We’ve got to ignore a little tax fraud because we’re covering up a relationship, but Georgia, we’re serious now!'” He continued. “You are either with him and willing to forgive everything big or small, or you fight him.”
So Many Criminal Probes, So Little Time
The New York charges against Trump are based on a scheme with Cohen and David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid, to protect Trump from negative stories during his 2016 presidential run by buying them with the intention of not publishing them – a practice known as “catch and kill” .”
The 34 counts of falsified business records in the indictment all relate to $130,000 in cash that Trump paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels through Cohen in the closing days of the campaign. Trump won the election with just 77,744 votes in three key states – meaning the suppression of Daniels’ story may be over.
The criminal investigation by federal prosecutors ended with Cohen pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions, with court papers referring to Trump as “Individual-1”, who had directed Cohen to pay. But the Justice Department has a policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents — a policy that U.S. Supreme Court justices made during oral arguments in 2020 appears likely to apply to local prosecutors, too — and Trump was not indicted at the time.
Bragg, who was elected in 2020, got a full investigation into Trump’s business practices, which paid Daniels a small cut of his own hand.
While some legal experts predict that they will be questioned, others say that the falsified invoices and book entries will easily create evidence of the crime.
Regardless, the four-year maximum sentence Trump could face if convicted pales in comparison to the prison time he could receive if convicted of the charges Georgia and the DOJ are considering.
In Atlanta, the Fulton County district attorney’s office is close to deciding whether to charge Trump and his top aides for trying to force state officials to “find” Trump an additional 11,780 votes to reverse his election loss there to Democrat Joe Biden. Charges may include electoral fraud, conspiracy and racketeering, some versions of which carry prison terms of up to 20 years.
The DOJ’s special counsel, Jack Smith, is also investigating Trump’s actions up to and including January 6, 2021 – when Trump repeatedly lied that the election had been “stolen” leading angry followers to storm the US Capitol, targeting pressure on the vice president to use fraudulent slates of voters to give Trump a second term. Possible charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States and fomenting an insurgency.
Smith also investigated Trump’s refusal to turn over classified documents he brought to his country club in Florida when he left the White House, despite a subpoena being issued asking him to do so. Possible charges include violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.
The federal charges carry the potential of up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Rushing to Trump’s Defense
No modern presidential candidate has stepped forward to face criminal charges — let alone multiple investigations, each potentially bringing their own charges.
But Trump has not only continued to campaign, but has also appeared to revel in the accusations, and he has managed to beat his rivals into spreading the claim that it is pure politics.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott spoke on statement: “This pro-criminal New York DA has failed to uphold the law against violent criminals, but is a weapon of law against political enemies. This is a travesty and should not be happening in the greatest country on Earth.
“It’s more about revenge than it is about justice,” said former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said on Fox News before the allegations were revealed. (Haley, who has officially announced her bid for the White House, then included one line criticizing Trump — “Donald Trump had a good Q1, if you count as ‘good'” — in a memo to supporters bragging about his first-quarter accomplishments .)
“Arresting a presidential candidate on the basis of production should not happen in America,” write Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, also before the indictment was made public.
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who many anti-Trump Republicans are counting on to win the nomination, issued the strongest defense of all – saying that he, if he came, would violate the US Constitution by refusing extradition proceedings. .
After all the rush to defend Trump in the first, and most likely least consequential, indictment, will they also protect him if more serious charges are brought against him for a coup attempt or for keeping secret documents?
“It’s going to be tough,” admitted a Republican consultant working with one of the non-Trump hopefuls, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A possible argument is that the large number of criminal cases made Trump lose the general election and therefore make him a bad choice in the primary, the consultant added.
“All of these things, legal or not, will make it harder for him to beat Biden in 2024,” the consultant said.
Mike Murphy, a Republican veteran of multiple presidential races, said other 2024 candidates should not attack Trump directly in the event of additional indictments.
“Bigger things with stronger evidence, even for Republican voters, will provide a more viable way to get rid of Trump,” he said. “This will not be a direct criticism, but a call to continue beyond Trump. That is enough. In primary politics, this is the best way.
Democratic consultant David Axelrod, who helped Barack Obama win the White House in 2008, said he wasn’t sure Republican hopefuls even had a path past Trump, given his continued hold on key voting bases.
“It’s a tail chasing the dog situation,” he said, citing a recent CNN poll that showed Trump with a 72% approval rating among Republicans, but only 26% among independents. “Her dilemma is that she can’t live with him and she’s afraid that she can’t live on her own basis without him.”