As Trump legal woes worsen, 2024 rivals toe a delicate line

Of the many incongruities in Donald Trump’s life, this one may be the most stark: The former president has never been in greater legal peril – and his dominance of the Republican Party seems as strong as ever. 

Before Mr. Trump’s 37-count criminal federal indictment last week over his post-presidency retention of classified documents – including six counts of obstruction – he was already far ahead in the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race. Today, the latest polling shows Mr. Trump crushing his primary competitors. 

A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday shows Mr. Trump with 61% support among likely GOP primary voters – ahead of his recent average – versus just 23% for his nearest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And polling suggests that some voters who had moved away from Mr. Trump have now come back to him – a shift that was apparent after Mr. Trump’s criminal indictment in April in New York state over alleged falsifying of business records.  

For most of the dozen or so non-Trump Republicans vying for the GOP nomination, the former president’s legal woes present a unique challenge: The need to distance themselves from Mr. Trump and his various controversies without alienating his supporters, many of whom are rallying to his defense. The two-track formula some candidates have settled on, for now, involves criticizing the indictment as political while also suggesting the party ought to move on from a candidate who attracts so much drama.

In the wake of Friday’s indictment, for example, Governor DeSantis put out a statement that criticized “an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation,” but also did not defend Mr. Trump’s actions. 

On Monday, former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley argued on Fox News that the Department of Justice and FBI had “lost all credibility with the American people.” But, she went on, if the charges in the indictment are accurate, Mr. Trump was “incredibly reckless with our national security.”

“Two things can be true at the same time,” she said. 

“This is a very difficult needle for Trump’s opponents to thread,” says Danny Hayes, a political scientist at George Washington University. “They want to say that Trump has done things they wouldn’t do – but at the same time, he shouldn’t be punished for it.” 

That’s a subtle criticism, Professor Hayes adds, and for the most part, voters don’t really deal in subtlety.

“The message that most people hear is that the prosecution is unjustified – not that Trump behaved inappropriately or did something wrong,” he says. 

The former president’s latest legal problems will be front and center at 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, when he appears in federal court in Miami for his arraignment. Pro-Trump protesters are expected to rally at the courthouse, and on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump has summoned the media to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for remarks. He’s also scheduled to hold his first fundraiser of the campaign Tuesday evening, at Bedminster. 

Of course, it’s still early days – and some GOP strategists say it makes sense for Mr. Trump’s rivals to be cautious for now. 

“They’ll want to be careful not to say something they might regret later,” says Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant. “All of this is so unprecedented. There is no playbook for candidates to look to.” 

Voters, too, are still processing the news. But the view among many conservatives, which has been repeatedly hammered by Mr. Trump and his allies – that the American justice system has been “weaponized” against the administration’s political opponents – could be hard to shake. 

Even warnings by GOP heavy hitters may fall on deaf ears. Former Attorney General William Barr, who served under Mr. Trump, was unequivocal in his view of the federal indictment yesterday on Fox News. “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,” he said. 

When asked about the comment, a Florida-based Republican strategist who supports Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Barr as a “disgruntled former employee.” 

Among the large Republican field of candidates, only two have fully broken with Mr. Trump, both former governors – Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas. Their message is clear: He should not be the party’s standard-bearer. Mr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, has called the federal indictment alleging obstruction and mishandling of classified documents “devastating.” Mr. Hutchinson called on Mr. Trump to end his campaign. 

But it’s hard to see their message gaining much traction among Republican primary voters – or even reaching them. Both are likely to have a hard time garnering enough support in the polls or in numbers of donors to qualify for the first Republican debate in August. 

The rest of the field is avoiding attacking Mr. Trump and, to a greater or lesser degree, trying to have it both ways. 

Governor DeSantis took what some interpreted as a veiled swipe at the former president last Friday at a GOP convention in North Carolina. In his days as a naval officer, he said he “would have been court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents to his apartment. He was speaking of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was investigated over her use of a private server for work – but the parallels to Mr. Trump were unmistakable. Governor DeSantis has also pledged to “bring accountability to the DOJ [Department of Justice], excise political bias, and end weaponization once and for all.”

Other high-profile candidates – including former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott – have also made the “weaponization” argument. 

One GOP candidate who has gone further is businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who pledged that, if elected, he would pardon Mr. Trump on his first day in office. He did criticize the former president for holding on to classified documents, but called the indictment “deeply politicized.” 

In going easy on Mr. Trump, some of the lower-polling candidates may be signaling that they’re interested in being his running mate. But for anyone who runs for the top job, there’s always the hope of catching on – and in this primary cycle, that means peeling off soft Trump voters. 

Kevin Madden, a veteran of three Republican presidential campaigns, argues that the non-Trump candidates can’t just sit back and wait for voters to come to them – they need to seize the moment. 

“Very rarely in a campaign do you have an opening like this against the front-runner that provides everybody else in the race an opportunity to advance and an opportunity to really drive a contrast,” Mr. Madden says. 

The obvious argument, he says, is that Mr. Trump is “a wounded candidate who is in a position to lose the general election as a result of all the nonstop legal trouble he’s gotten himself into.” 

In addition to the two recent indictments, Mr. Trump is also facing another potential federal indictment around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and a case in Georgia centered on an alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election result.

“Trump voters aren’t going to just get tired and peel off on their own,” Mr. Madden says. “Someone has to make a case that they’re a better vehicle for their vote in the general election.”

Shellie Flockhart, a salon owner outside Des Moines, Iowa – the state that will hold the first GOP nominating contest early in 2024 – voted for Mr. Trump twice. This time, she’s keeping her options open, and lists three candidates she’s considering: Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis, and Mr. Ramaswamy. 

But Ms. Flockhart, like many GOP voters, is also skeptical of the Trump documents case. She notes that President Joe Biden, too, was found to have classified documents in his personal possession (from his days as vice president and as a senator). The differences between the two cases – such as whether the documents were returned promptly upon discovery – may not strike many voters as significant.  

To make people turn on Mr. Trump, Ms. Flockhart says, “it would have to be something really major that we haven’t seen another president do.”