WASHINGTON — Republican presidential hopefuls not named Donald Trump are confronting a question that was unimaginable just a few years back: How many criminal accusations must their party’s leader face before using them against him is politically acceptable?
Less than 10 months away from when the first primary votes are cast, the coup-attempting former president has so far boxed in his rivals from employing what not that long ago would have been their most potent argument to disqualify him.
“No one yet has given any indication they plan to condemn Trump in any way,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who has long criticized Trump. “So I can only assume they will support him through additional indictments — when of course they shouldn’t and are simply repeating the same dynamics of 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 Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
And even he downplayed the seriousness of the state court indictment — although it was based on the same set of facts that led to a felony guilty plea and time in a federal prison for Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Kevin Madden, a Republican consultant who worked on the 2012 presidential campaign of now-Sen. Mitt Romney, said he cannot understand how any of Trump’s rivals expect to beat him if they are unwilling to even engage with him.
“You need to distinguish yourself from the field, based on your credentials, vision, competency and electability,” he said. “It’s near impossible to do that when your opponent gets indicted and then you defend them.”
Trump supporters almost uniformly claim that Alvin Bragg’s charges are unfair and “politically motivated,” with the DA pushing an “agenda” supported by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Even some Trump critics in the Republican Party said the charges will not only allow him to rally support from a voting base that may have been open to an alternative candidate, but help him to fend off criticism should indictments for his 2021 coup attempt and his hoarding of top-secret documents come to pass.
“I do worry that the sequencing of these cases will make it even harder for Republicans to speak up against Trump when future charges arise,” said Lucy Caldwell, who ran former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh’s quixotic primary challenge against Trump in 2020.
Other Republicans, though, said that voters are smart enough to distinguish between weaker, years-old cases and potentially far more serious charges, and that other candidates are likely to adjust their messages accordingly.
“When you’ve got everyone from Mitt Romney to Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same page, there isn’t much to do but join in,” said GOP consultant Scott Jennings, contrasting the anti-Trump Utahan with the Trump-boosting Georgia congresswoman, both Republicans. “Future cases could be more serious and warrant different strategies.”
Marc Short, an adviser to likely 2024 candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, said Trump’s problems with criminal investigations are likely only getting started, and he expects other candidates to make them an issue as the race progresses, particularly when televised debates begin in the summer.
“There’re going to be plenty of those opportunities,” he said. “I don’t see how this conversation doesn’t make it onto the debate stage.”
But Trump’s strongest GOP critics fear that he has already accomplished what he wanted by forcing his rivals to cast him as a victim of prosecutors who are unfairly out to get him.
“One can’t be half-pregnant. Going all the way back to ‘Access Hollywood,’ there is no safe political middle ground,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chair of the New Hampshire GOP, referring to the 2016 scandal around a leaked recording of Trump boasting that celebrity allowed him to grab women by the genitals.
“No room to say, ‘We should overlook a little tax fraud resulting from covering up an affair, but Georgia, now that’s serious!’” he continued. “You’re either with him and willing to excuse everything big or small, or you’re against him.”
So Many Criminal Probes, So Little Time
The New York charges against Trump are based on his scheme with Cohen and David Pecker, former publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, to shield Trump from negative stories as he ran for president in 2016 by purchasing them with the intention of never publishing them — a practice known as “catch and kill.”
The 34 counts of falsifying business records in the indictment all relate to $130,000 in hush money that Trump paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels through Cohen in the closing days of that campaign. Trump wound up winning that election by just 77,744 votes across three key states — meaning that the suppression of the Daniels story could well have been determinative.
A criminal investigation by federal prosecutors ended with Cohen pleading guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution, with court papers referring to Trump as “Individual-1,” who had directed Cohen to make the payment. But the Department of Justice has a policy not to prosecute a sitting president — a policy that U.S. Supreme Court justices during oral arguments in 2020 appeared to acknowledge would apply to local prosecutors, as well — and Trump was not charged at the time.
Bragg, who was elected in 2020, inherited a comprehensive investigation into Trump’s business practices, of which the payment to Daniels was a small piece that he chose to pursue on its own.
While some legal experts predict it is doomed, others say that the falsified invoices and ledger entries will make proving elements of the crime relatively straightforward.
Regardless, the maximum four-year sentence that Trump could face if convicted pales in comparison to the prison time he could receive if convicted on charges that may be under consideration in Georgia and by the DOJ.
In Atlanta, the Fulton County district attorney’s office is getting close to deciding whether to charge Trump and his top aides for their attempt to coerce state officials to “find” Trump an additional 11,780 votes to reverse his election loss there to Democrat Joe Biden. Charges could include election fraud, conspiracy and racketeering, some versions of which carry prison sentences as long as 20 years.
DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, meanwhile, is also investigating Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021 — when Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been “stolen” led his incensed followers to storm the U.S. Capitol, aiming to pressure the vice president to use fraudulent slates of electors to award Trump a second term. Possible charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States and incitement of an insurrection.
Smith is also investigating Trump’s refusal to turn over top-secret documents he had taken with him to his country club in Florida upon leaving the White House, even after a subpoena had been issued demanding he do so. Possible charges include violation of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.
The federal charges carry potential prison terms of up to 10 years if convicted.
Rushing To Trump’s Defense
No modern presidential candidate has gone forward facing a criminal charge — let alone multiple investigations, each potentially bringing its own set of charges.
Yet Trump is not only continuing his campaign but giving the appearance of reveling in the indictment, and he has managed to cow his rivals into spreading his claim that it is pure politics.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said in a statement: “This pro-criminal New York DA has failed to uphold the law for violent criminals, yet weaponized the law against political enemies. This is a travesty and it should not be happening in the greatest country on Earth.”
“It’s more about revenge than it is about justice,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said on Fox News before the charges were even revealed. (Haley, who has formally announced her bid for the White House, later included one line criticizing Trump — “Donald Trump had a pretty good Q1, if you count being indicted as ‘good’” — in a memo to supporters boasting about her own first-quarter accomplishments.)
“Arresting a presidential candidate on a manufactured basis should not happen in America,” wrote Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also before the indictment was made public.
And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom many anti-Trump Republicans are counting on to win the nomination, issued the most forceful defense of all — stating that he, if it came to it, would violate the U.S. Constitution by refusing to process an extradition.
Having all rushed to Trump’s defense at his first, and likely least consequential, indictment, will they similarly protect him if more serious charges come to pass for his coup attempt or his hoarding of secret documents?
“It’s going to be tricky,” acknowledged a Republican consultant working with one of the non-Trump hopefuls, on condition of anonymity.
A possible argument they might make is that the sheer number of criminal cases renders Trump a sure loser in a general election and therefore a bad choice in the primary, the consultant added.
“All of this stuff, whether legitimate or not, is going to make it harder for him to beat Biden in 2024,” the consultant said.
Mike Murphy, a Republican veteran of multiple presidential races, said the other 2024 candidates won’t have to attack Trump directly if there are additional indictments.
“The bigger stuff with far more compelling evidence, even to Republican voters, will give them a more workable way to distance themselves from Trump,” he said. “It will not be direct criticism, but a call to move on beyond Trump. That’s enough. Inside primary politics, it is the best way.”
Democratic consultant David Axelrod, who helped Barack Obama win the White House in 2008, said he is skeptical that Republican hopefuls even have a path past Trump, given his continued hold on the primary voting base.
“This is a situation of the tail wagging the dog,” he said, citing a recent CNN poll showing Trump with a 72% approval rating among Republicans, but only 26% among independents. “Their dilemma is they can’t survive with him and they fear they can’t survive with their own base without him.”