The possibility of another federal indictment charging former U.S. president Donald Trump with crimes looms large. Anticipation grows after the leading GOP presidential candidate announced, via his Truth Social media site, that he is the target of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation into events surrounding January 6.
This comes on the heels of Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis recently convening a grand jury looking into possible crimes with which to charge Trump and others.
ROCKET FUEL TO SUPERCHARGE HIS STANDING
Like the federal January 6 investigation, Willis is narrowing in on criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Ever the cunning and wily showman that he is, Trump has used the spectre of indictments and criminal prosecutions as rocket fuel to supercharge his political standing.
And in the early voting states of Iowa and South Carolina, Trump remains comfortably ahead.
He now wields the trifecta; sitting atop the national polls, early state polls, and the vaunted money race. Yet, leading in the political race could be a pyrrhic victory for the ex-president as he faces overwhelming and mounting evidence against him in federal and state criminal cases spread across several jurisdictions.
Six months ago, Trump’s then-nascent presidential campaign was flailing. Lacking resources, supporters, and seemingly a GOP, all eager to move on from the reality-television-star-turned politician.
According to The Associated Press, the Make America Great Again pol raised US$18.8 million in the first quarter of the campaign with $4.4 million raised after his first indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney in New York City.
The second quarter saw the former president nearly double that amount, raising more than $35 million. Not just limited to fundraising, the latest PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll shows the remarkable resilience of the ex-president. His support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents continues to increase even as he faces dozens of felony charges.
According to the poll, “Seventy-six percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they hold a favourable view of Trump which is up 8 percentage points since mid-February.”
STRENGTHS AS GOP CANDIDATE
Trump’s strengths as a GOP candidate are undeniable. His popularity among the base remains resolute and unflinching. However, go inside the numbers and they tell a very different, more ominous story for Trump the defendant. Those numbers should invoke fear and trembling in Trump the candidate.
In that same PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll, it shows that: three-quarters of Americans overall think the leading Republican candidate for president has done something either illegal or unethical.
The poll goes on to state: a majority of Americans (56 per cent) say the twice-impeached and twice indicted former president should drop out of the 2024 race for the White House. These are deeply troubling numbers for Donald Trump. Not just for what it portends for his candidacy in a general election matchup with President Joe Biden but what a potential jury pool might think of his guilt or innocence.
The preponderance of evidence against the ex-president is devastating. The 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, stemming from hush money payments made during the 2016 election, carry with them a maximum of 136 years in state prison if convicted on all counts. Each charge in the 37-count indictment, stemming from the classified documents case, carries prison time ranging from 5-20 years. Trump’s efforts to shape a political narrative out of his legal travails have proven successful so far.
Yet, once inside an actual court of law, the political bromides cease and it is the facts and evidence that speak volumes, not inane schoolyard antics. The loquacious ex president has offered a bevy of baffling defences but none that seem remotely adequate to convince a jury. Perhaps even more confounding, as the Washington Post reported, it is unclear if Trump has settled on a legal team that will represent him in the classified documents case.
Ironically, Trump has expertly and strategically developed a blueprint to use the criminality surrounding him to his political benefit. Yet that same expertise and precision quickly morphs into ineptness when attempting to mount an equally effective and sound legal strategy to combat charges that could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.
If the strategy is to delay the trials until after the presidential election such a plan is already proving unsuccessful. The Trump legal team, to no avail, argued before the judge that a start date for the classified documents trial should wait until after the election. The Trump-appointed judge, in the case, rejected the argument in favour of a May 20, 2024 start date.
The Manhattan case begins two months prior in March 2024. Delaying tactics surrounding potential indictments in Georgia and Washington, DC might prove less fruitful as well. Such efforts appear to have worn thin. Moreover, potential judges in those jurisdictions are less likely to be as enamoured with Trump as the GOP base.
Trump clearly has found marketing and political gold with the plethora of criminal investigations he is facing. He has figured out how to use the threat of conviction to energize his base and thwart the competition. His ability to shape a narrative that benefits his own aims is what catapulted him to the White House in 2016.
Unfortunately for Trump, there are limits to this strategy. Smart, savvy, and dogged prosecutors are relentlessly pursuing cases against him and unlike the former president, they are not playing to a political audience. Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis are playing to a potential jury pool. And it is those jury pools that could upend Trump, politically and legally.
