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A day after filing charges against Donald J. Trump, the Manhattan district attorneys office wrote a letter criticizing three influential congressional Republicans for their efforts to interfere in the investigation into the former president.

The letter was addressed to three committee chairmen who had demanded that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, provide them with communications, documents and testimony related to the inquiry into Mr. Trump.

The offices letter noted that before being indicted, Mr. Trump had used his social media platform to denigrate Mr. Bragg, and had threatened death and destruction if he were to be charged.

You could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury, Leslie Dubeck, the general counsel for the district attorneys office, wrote.

Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trumps efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges, Ms. Dubeck wrote, describing as unfounded the three members allegations that the investigation was politically motivated.

The letter, addressed to Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; James R. Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee; and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chairman of the Administration Committee, repeated portions of an earlier one Ms. Dubeck had sent them, calling the Republican request for confidential information about the investigation unprecedented.

Like any other defendant, Mr. Trump is entitled to challenge these charges in court, she wrote, adding, What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State.

Ms. Dubeck and the Republicans have traded two letters apiece since Mr. Trumps arrest prediction on March 18, which prompted his political allies to rush to his side.

Responding to news of the indictment on Thursday evening, Mr. Jordan tweeted one word: Outrageous.

The back-and-forth highlights the politically charged nature of Mr. Trumps indictment, which has thrown the 2024 presidential race into new territory and threatens to test national and state institutions and the rule of law.

The Republican effort to influence Mr. Braggs investigation mimics Mr. Trumps own efforts, while he occupied the White House, to tar law enforcement officials as partisan actors motivated solely by politics.

Mr. Trump continued that line of attack on Thursday. In a statement, he called Mr. Bragg a disgrace and said this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden, who defeated him in the 2020 presidential race, has had nothing to do with the district attorneys investigation and has not commented on the indictment.

Concluding her letter, Ms. Dubeck urged the congressional Republicans to withdraw their demand for information about the investigation and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference.

But she said that the office was willing to meet with the chairmen or their staffs, and asked for a list of questions for Mr. Bragg and a description of the types of documents they were requesting.

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Braggs Office Criticizes Top Republicans Over Trump Investigation - The New York Times

Minnesota's already complicated relationship with Donald Trump just got more fraught.

The businessman came closer than any Republican in decades to flipping the state red in 2016. Four years later, he decisively lost his re-election bid in Minnesota to Joe Biden.

Now, as he seeks the presidency in 2024 freshly mired in a historic criminal indictment Minnesotans must again confront the question of how they feel about Trump.

"I think he did a lot of stuff he wasn't supposed to be doing," said Hibbing resident Ron Molick, who described himself on Friday as "on the fence" about Trump and the indictment. He's voted for him twice, but doesn't think he would again.

The grand jury's decision didn't change how Jon Bukovich sees Trump. The 45-year-old, who lives outside of Hibbing, said he didn't follow politics until 2016 when he said Trump opened his eyes to political corruption.

Bukovich wasn't surprised by news of the indictment, and he's not worried about it either. He thinks the former president will be found not guilty of wrongdoing and forge ahead.

"They keep trying to hammer Trump and nothing sticks," he said, laughing. "I swear the guy is Teflon."

The Trump question is most immediate for Minnesota Republicans, who voters cast out of power in St. Paul and are trying to find their way back in 2024. The candidate at the top of their ticket next year for president will define the overarching message of the campaign.

"Whenever we're talking about Donald Trump, that really seems to hurt Republicans in Minnesota," said Andy Brehm,an attorney and GOP political operative.

While Brehm said he's worried about the precedent the indictment sets for the criminal justice system, he wants his party to move on from Trump and focus on attacking one-party control and the Democratic agenda at the State Capitol.

"To win elections, we're working really hard to rebrand ourselves. The way we've been selling our ideas hasn't been working," Brehm said. "Continuing to have Trump in the headlines is a distraction from that work."

Hours after the news broke, top Minnesota Republicans largely cast the case as a "politically motivated" attack. Former Minnesota Republican governor candidate Scott Jensen said the indictment will inspire blowback from voters.

"If [Manhattan district attorney] Alvin Bragg and his team want to make a martyr out of President Trump, I think he may rue the day he chose to do that," Jensen said.

Trump's indictment makes Republicans likely to rally to his defense, said Amy Koch, a GOP operative and former state Senate majority leader.

"He wants an enemy, he wants a fight, because in a fight, his people demand allegiance," Koch said. "I think this strengthens him in a very, very strange way."

Republicans have so far only offered broad statements about the indictment, with many saying it raises concerns about fairness in the judicial system. They've avoided commenting on the allegations of hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels at the center of the case. The specific criminal charges against Trump won't be unsealed until he is arraigned, which is expected Tuesday.

For Matt Huschle, chair of the Clearwater County Republicans,Trump's stance against abortion rights is more important than the indictment, citing the former president's appointments of Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

"That's the most lasting impact for me," Huschle said. "I can see what he has done for the country, and compared to what Biden is doing, it's hands-down Trump."

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for part of Trump's presidency, is his main opponent for the GOP nomination so far. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is widely expected to run as well and is gaining popularity in the party.

"In the minds of voters, is anybody's calculus on this going to change?" Minnesota conservative talk radio host Jon Justice said on his show Friday. "Individuals who may have been looking at other candidates and waiting for the full field for Republican candidates in 2024 to emerge, they may see this and it might change their calculus."

Chad Heuer, a 49-year-old Shakopee resident who works at Canterbury Park, thinks Democrats and investigators are putting unfair scrutiny on Trump. Heuer said he voted for Trump in 2020 and always votes Republican, but added he plans to vote for a different Republican in 2024 adding that it's not due to the indictment.

"It's time for a new person to come in," Heuer said.

How this all affects Trump's chances in 2024 could come down to independent-minded voters.

"It's going to depend on the independents and undecided voters and the kind of people who, frankly, don't pay very much attention," said Kevin Parsneau, a political science professor at Minnesota State University Mankato. "What is their gut reaction? What will their impressions be?"

Democratic voters were happy about the indictment news, even if they were far from certain anything would come from it.

Carlos Gomez, a 32-year-old clothes salesman from Shakopee, said that even major public officials should have to suffer the consequences of violating the law. But he didn't think Trump's supporters would abandon him.

"He already has his cult following that will vote for him no matter what," he said.

Kristin Dillon and Alexis Akervik, both Democrats who live in the Twin Cities area, said they were joyous about the indictment when they heard the news Thursday while walking through the Mall of America.

"Two thumbs up. It's great, now let's see him actually go to jail," said Akervik, a graphic designer. "Let's call it a day on this guy."

She was cautious about whether there would be any long-term repercussions for Trump, but she thought Minnesotans might be more willing to reject him after the indictment.

"If any state with GOPers is going to be like, 'You know what? That's enough,' it's going to be here," Akervik said.

Dillon, her companion, was far less confident. Trump, she said, "literally said he could shoot someone on Sixth Avenue and get away with it, and it seems like maybe it's true."

Staff writers Louis Krauss and Ryan Faircloth contributed to this report.

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Minnesota Republicans, Democrats are polarized by Trump indictment - Star Tribune

Republican leaders in Congress lamented the moment as a sad day in the annals of United States history. Conservative news outlets issued a call to action for the partys base. One prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump suggested that the former presidentsmug shot should double as a 2024 campaign poster.

Even Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely viewed as Mr. Trumps leading potential presidential primary rival, rushed to condemn the prosecutor who brought the Manhattan case that led to the historic indictment of the former president on Thursday. While not naming Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis said Florida would not play a role in extraditing him.

The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head, Mr. DeSantis said on Twitter.

Up and down the Republican Party, anger and accusations of injustice flowed from both backers and critics of the former president, even before the charges had been revealed. Many said Mr. Trump could benefit from a wave of sympathy from across the party, with a base of supporters likely to be energized by a belief that the justice system has been weaponized against him.

The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage, former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN.

In some quarters, there was a darker reaction. On Fox News, the host Tucker Carlson said the ruling showed it was probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s.

The rule of law appears to be suspended tonight not just for Trump, but for anyone who would consider voting for him, Mr. Carlson said. One of his guests, the conservative media figure Glenn Beck, predicted that the indictment would cause chaos in the years ahead.

How the indictment affects Mr. Trumps bid to remain the nations top Republican and capture the partys 2024 presidential nomination may remain unclear for weeks, if not months. The Manhattan inquiry is one of four criminal investigations involving Mr. Trump, and the outcomes and cumulative political effects of those cases remain to be seen.

But David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group seeking a replacement for Mr. Trump as the face of the Republican Party, said the indictment had already generated sympathy for the former president. Mr. McIntosh compared the case to the old Soviet show trials and argued that many Americans would view it similarly.

Were crossing the Rubicon here by mixing politics and law enforcement, he said in an interview. Its a huge, huge mistake and a threat to our democratic process. People can disagree about who our leaders should be, but we have a long tradition of not turning it into a criminal process.

The race begins. Four years after a historically large number of candidates ran for president, the field for the 2024 campaignis starting out small and is likely to be headlined by the same two men who ran last time: President Biden and Donald Trump. Heres who has entered the race so far, and who else might run:

Donald Trump. The former president is running to retake the office he lost in 2020. Though somewhat diminished in influencewithin the Republican Party and facing several legal investigations he retains a large and committed base of supporters, and he could be aided in the primary by multiple challengers splitting a limited anti-Trump vote.

President Biden. While Biden has not formally declared his candidacy for a second term, and there has been much hand-wringing among Democratsover whether he should seek re-election givenhis age, he is widely expected to run. If he does, Bidens strategyis to frame the race as a contest between a seasoned leader and a conspiracy-minded opposition.

Marianne Williamson. The self-help author and former spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey is the first Democrat to formally enter the race. Kicking off her second presidential campaign, Williamson called Biden a weak choice and said the party shouldnt fear a primary. Few in Democratic politics are taking her entry into the race seriously.

Mr. Trump and his allies also believe the criminal charges carry political upside, at least in a primary race. The former president has spent much of the past two weeks on social media and his speech on Saturday in Texas at the first major rally of his 2024 campaign trying to amplify the outrage among his supporters. He had also sought to influence the ultimate decision by Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, on whether to bring charges.

This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history, Mr. Trump said in a statement on Thursday.

Mr. Trumps protests of an unfair justice system come after he repeatedly threatened or sought to employ his presidential powers to pursue his real and perceived enemies. He has also long sought to use the existence of investigations into political rivals as a cudgel against them, including in 2016, when he ran television ads declaring Hillary Clinton unfit to serve after being crippled by the investigation into her emails.

And he has spent years persuading supporters to internalize political and legal threats to him as deeply personal attacks on them.

In the last month, Mr. Trump improved his standing by 11 percentage points in a hypothetical primary field, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. The poll found that Mr. Trump was favored by 54 percent of Republican voters, up from 43 percent last month.

Its the craziest thing, Mr. Trump said Saturday at his rally in Waco, Texas. I got bad publicity and my poll numbers have gone through the roof. Would you explain this to me?

On CNN, Mr. Pence, who is considering a 2024 presidential bid, said the indictment had no bearing on his own decision about whether to run. He was one of the few prospective or official candidates to comment.

How Times reporters cover politics.We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

But the political effects for Mr. Trump could be determined in part by his response to the charges. His recent attempt to fight his legal battle on a political playing field has reignited the kind of behavior that tends to turn off moderate Republicans and independents. The defection of these voters from Mr. Trump, and from his preferred candidates and causes, has resulted in three consecutive disappointing election cycles for the party.

Some Republicans, including former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, have said there are limits to the political benefit of an indictment.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found that 57 percent of Americans said that criminal charges should disqualify Mr. Trump from seeking office again, while 38 percent disagreed.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump absorbed the news from Mar-a-Lago, his South Florida resort, after being informed by his lawyers, according to two Trump associates briefed on the matter.

Even though the former president had incorrectly predicted he would be arrested nine days ago, the indictment caught his team off guard, according to several people close to the former president.

Trump aides had believed reports by some news outlets that the grand jury in Manhattan was not working on the case on Thursday. Some advisers had been confident that there would be no movement until the end of April at the earliest and were looking at the political implications for Mr. DeSantis, who has not yet announced a campaign.

Mr. Trumps allies see the New York case as the most trivial, and had spent several days adamant that it was falling apart, without explaining why they believed this beyond faith in a defense witness.

Even the indictment will become the kind of spectacle Mr. Trump often seeks. His legal travails are likely to further suck up media oxygen and blot out other coverage of the presidential race, at a time when his closest prospective rival, Mr. DeSantis, is still introducing himself to voters around the country.

I believe this will help President Trump politically but its horrible for our country and the judicial system, Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and Trump ally, said in an interview.

Mr. Trump has been briefed on the process he will now go through, and is expected to surrender next week, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Conservative news networks were brimming with conversations about the mechanics of the indictment after it was announced and what it meant for the presidential campaign.

Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard law professor, said during an interview on Newsmax that a mug shot of Mr. Trump could serve as a campaign poster.

He will be mug-shot and fingerprinted, Mr. Dershowitz said. Theres really no way around that.

On War Room, a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trumps former chief strategist, Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, called for supporters to peacefully protest.

We are going to see who are the politicians, who are the grifters, and who are the America First patriots, Mr. Gorka said. This is a time of sorting.

On Fox News, the host Jesse Watters said that the country is not going to stand for it, adding: And people better be careful. And thats all Ill say about that.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia wrote on Twitter that arresting a presidential candidate on a manufactured basis should not happen in America.

In Washington, Republicans continued to circle the wagons in defense of Mr. Trump.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California said Mr. Bragg had irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our presidential election.

As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump, Mr. McCarthy wrote on Twitter. The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.

Representative Elise Stefanik, a top supporter of Mr. Trump and a member of the House Republican leadership, called for people to peacefully organize, a notable statement after Mr. Trump urged his supporters to protest ahead of an indictment. That call prompted concerns about echoes of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a pro-Trump mob.

Mr. Trump did not reiterate his call for protests in his statement on Thursday.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, took the extraordinary step last week to involve Congress in an open investigation by sending a letter, along with two other House Republican chairmen, demanding that Mr. Bragg provide communications, documents and testimony about his investigation.

After the indictment was announced, Mr. Jordan tweeted one word in response to the news: Outrageous.

Reporting was contributed by Ken Bensinger, Jonah E. Bromwich, Charles Homans, Luke Broadwater and Katie Robertson.

The rest is here:
Republicans Erupt in Outrage Over Trump Indictment, Defending the Defendant - The New York Times

WASHINGTON House Republicans who have said they will not vote to raise the national debt limit without deep spending cuts are backing away from their promise to balance the budget and struggling to unite their fractious majority behind a fiscal plan, paralyzing progress on talks to avert a catastrophic default as soon as this summer.

Determined to use the coming confrontation over the national debt to extract sweeping spending concessions from Democrats, House G.O.P. leaders announced a series of lofty goals earlier this year driven in large part by the demands of the hard-right faction of their party. They include balancing the federal budget in 10 years and freezing spending at prepandemic levels, all without touching Social Security, Medicare or military funding.

But even as they continue to deride President Bidens $6.8 trillion budget proposal, released this month, House Republicans have begun to inch away from their own stated objectives, plagued by divisions that have prevented them from agreeing on a plan of their own that can draw enough support to pass with their slim majority.

The pledge to balance the nations budget has gone by the wayside, initially softened to a commitment to put the nation on a path toward a balanced budget and now seemingly scrapped altogether. The timetable for when Republicans say they will put out a budget blueprint has continued to slip. And after the Budget Committee chairman told reporters that the party was finalizing a list of specific cuts to bring to negotiations with Mr. Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy threw cold water on the idea, saying, I dont know what hes talking about.

The internal back-and-forth has prevented Republicans from reaching a consensus on spending cuts, which the party has said must be included in any measure to raise the debt limit, currently expected to be breached as early as July. That is an early indication of the perilous path aheadfor lawmakers who must broker a deal to avert a default thatcould trigger a global economic crisis.

I dont see how we get there, Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said of raising the debt ceiling. And this is a marked change from where Ive been. I dont even see a path.

Mr. McHenry, a key ally of Mr.McCarthy, added in remarks at an event hosted by Punchbowl News, Ive never been more pessimistic about where we stand with the debt ceiling, and weve been in some bad situations before.

In the absence of a budget plan that Republicans will swallow, or even make public, House leaders have sought to buy themselves more time, and instead tried to blame Democrats for delaying debt limit negotiations.

Mr. McCarthy sent a letter to Mr. Biden on Tuesday accusing the White House of being completely missing in action on any meaningful follow-up since their last meeting, in February, to discuss the looming deadline.

Detailing the most extensive list yet of categories of spending cuts his party is demanding, Mr. McCarthy made no reference to balancing the budget in 10 years, a tacit acknowledgment that his conference has all but abandoned that benchmark. He instead focused on freezing spending levels to pre-inflationary levels, strengthening work requirements for recipients of federal assistance programs and reclaiming unspent coronavirus emergency funds approved by Congress.

If the president would have a meeting, I would have all the $4 trillion sitting there and provided to you, Mr. McCarthy said on CNBC, when asked to detail his plan for tackling the debt.

Mr. Biden responded on Tuesday night with his own letter, replying that he was not interested in meeting until he could see House Republicans full set of proposals and requesting that Mr. McCarthy present them before the end of the week, a deadline that the conference almost certainly will not meet.

How Times reporters cover politics.We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

I look forward to your response, to eliminating the specter of default and to your budget, Mr. Biden wrote.

The problem for House Republican leaders is that the mountain of spending objectives demanded by their rank and file, which they have embraced, are practically impossible to enact all at once.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported this month that if House Republicans did not cut Social Security, Medicare, or defense and veterans spending while also renewing the tax cuts passed during the Trump administration, they would not be able to balance the budget even if they eliminated the rest of the budget entirely.

Representative Jodey C. Arrington, Republican of Texas and the Budget Committee chairman, told reporters on Wednesday evening that we have a goal to balance the budget in 10 years, but whatever the path is to balance, weve got to get 218 votes to pass it. Im a realist.

Both Mr. Bidens budget and House Republicans budget, he said, will have plenty of time to be assessed and scrutinized.

But that has not stopped Democrats from attacking the plan in the interim.

Republicans believe we can cut our way to a balanced budget, said Representative Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. That is not only false; its dangerous.

House majorities have often shied away from presenting budget resolutions which are planning documents without the force of law for fear of putting their most politically vulnerable lawmakers on the hook for tough votes. Any budget resolution put forward this year by Republican leaders featuring deep spending cuts threatens to endanger their critical bloc of swing-district lawmakers.

Why do we have to have a budget out to sit down and talk about the debt ceiling? Mr. McCarthy asked earlier this month at the House Republican retreat in Orlando.

That has left top Republicans focused on paring back spending levels to prepandemic levels.

I know some Democrats want to talk about draconian cuts, said Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, a McCarthy ally, adding that he did not think that description applied to last years spending levels. The Democrats didnt think they were draconian when they were voting for those laws.

At the same time, lawmakers in the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus have been unabashed about laying out the programs they believe the House Republican Conference should slash. They have also called for changes that would upend the federal budget process, such as starting at a baseline of zero spending and effectively re-evaluating all federal programs to determine whether they should be funded and at what levels.

We should be doing a line-item budget, said Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona. We should be doing a zero-based budget. That would allow us to make reductions specifically where they need to go.

The one piece of legislation designed to address the debt crisis that Republicans have been able to advance is a bill passed by the Ways and Means Committee that would prioritize payments on U.S. Treasury bonds if the nation could no longer borrow funds to cover all its expenses. That legislation passed on a party-line vote last month, after Democrats noted that the Biden administration had ruled out the idea as practically untenable.

Others have floated the idea of a short-term debt ceiling hike, though it is unclear whether hard-right Republicans, more than a dozen of whom have never voted to raise the debt limit, would back that approach. Mr. McHenry said earlier this week that he believed Republicans did not have the votes to pass a stand-alone bill allowing the United States to borrow more money.

Originally posted here:
Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan - The New York Times

Data shows the impact of an indictment on former President Donald Trump's standing with his party. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

The indictment of former President Donald Trump is likely to deliver a temporary boost to him in the GOP primary but at the expense of his standing among the broader electorate that will ultimately decide whether he returns to the White House.

Thats according to recent polling conducted prior to Thursdays news of Trumps indictment.

Pollsters will likely go back into the field now, but the protracted run-up to charges being filed against the former president allowed a number of pollsters to gauge Americans opinions about the matter.

In a number of surveys released over the past two weeks, most Americans said the then-rumored charges against Trump were fair and serious. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released last week, 56 percent of Americans said, taken together, the investigations into Trumps conduct were fair, and 55 percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University poll out this week said the probe into Trumps alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels was serious.

But among Republicans, those numbers were all reversed. They believed Trump was being unfairly targeted 80 percent of Republicans in the Marist poll said Trump is facing a witch hunt and New York County District Attorney Alvin Braggs office was bringing charges for conduct that is either legal or not serious enough to merit criminal indictment.

Tracking Trump investigations

The pre-indictment poll numbers are consistent with the political dynamic thats existed since Trump took office six years ago: The Republican base especially downscale voters and those who describe themselves as very conservative rallies around Trump after scandals, even as those controversies take a toll on Trumps overall image.

So whats best for Trumps chances of holding off Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the other candidates for the nomination an indictment that rallies most of Trumps competitors and rank-and-file Republican voters around him likely makes it more difficult for the GOP to reclaim the presidency in 2024.

Over the past month, as the prospect of criminal charges hung over Trump, the former president was actually increasing his national advantage over DeSantis, who hasnt officially entered the race yet, among GOP voters. The indictment does little to threaten that lead, at least in the short term as evidenced by DeSantis and the other declared or likely candidates decrying the charges on Thursday.

But its not just that Republican voters think Trump is being targeted or treated unfairly. A sizable portion of them believe hes fully innocent. In the Marist College poll, in addition to four-in-five Republicans calling the investigations into Trump a witch hunt, just 10 percent of GOP voters say Trump has done anything illegal. Nearly half, 45 percent, say Trump hasnt done anything wrong, while a sizable 43 percent describe Trumps behavior as unethical, but not illegal.

Similarly, in the pre-indictment Quinnipiac poll, only 20 percent of Republicans said the existence of criminal charges against Trump should disqualify him from running for president, and 52 percent said the Manhattan case was not serious at all.

Those numbers could change once the details of the indictment are made public. But for now, Republicans are out of step with the electorate as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the Quinnipiac poll say criminal charges should disqualify Trump from the campaign, and only 26 percent say the allegations in the New York case arent serious at all.

While most Republicans say the various Trump probes amount to a witch hunt in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, its only 41 percent of all Americans. And 46 percent of Americans say Trump has committed crimes (compared to only 10 percent of Republicans), while another 29 percent call Trumps actions unethical, but not illegal.

In another pre-indictment survey released this week, the Democratic polling consortium Navigator Research found that 57 percent of voters supported indicting Trump for illegally using campaign funds for personal expenses a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and then lying about it, including a quarter of Republicans, 25 percent.

And the online pollster Morning Consult offered the first data point following news of the indictment, though there has been little time for it to sink in yet. In a flash poll conducted early Friday, 51 percent of voters said they supported the indictment, but only 19 percent of GOP primary voters agreed. (Polls conducted entirely in one day, let alone a half-day, are subject to greater sources of potential error than other surveys.)

There is one message for Trump defenders that is resonating: Just because Americans dont think Trump isnt the victim of a witch hunt doesnt mean they dont think politics is a factor at all.

In the Quinnipiac poll, 62 percent of respondents said the district attorneys case is mainly motivated by politics, including 93 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents. Fewer than a third, 32 percent, said the case is mainly motivated by the law.

There are discreet limits to that argument, however. In Fridays Morning Consult poll, voters were split between those who said the New York grand jurys decision to indict Trump was mostly based on evidence that Trump violated the law (46 percent) and those who said the grand jury was motivated to damage Trumps political career (43 percent).

The coming days and weeks will bring more data, including following Trumps expected arraignment next week. And theres a hint in the Quinnipiac poll about how that moment could move the needle of public opinion.

Quinnipiacs pollsters cited Trumps statement earlier this week that his indictment was imminent and asked his supporters to protest and take our country back. They asked respondents if Trump was mainly acting out of concerns about democracy as a candidate who could face criminal charges while campaigning for the nations highest office, or mainly acting out of concerns for himself?

Of the subgroups identified by Quinnipiac, only one thought Trump was defending democracy in urging protests against his indictment: Republicans (56 percent). Majorities of all Americans (69 percent), Democrats (98 percent) and independents (71 percent) thought Trump was mostly concerned about himself.

Here are some of the people involved as the case against former President Donald Trump moves forward.

Michael Cohen

Trumps former attorney testified in 2018 that he made a hush-money payment on behalf of Trump.

Stormy Daniels

The porn actress is said to have received $130,000 for her silence about an affair with Trump.

Alvin Bragg

The Manhattan DA took office in January 2022 and inherited the investigation.

Allen Weisselberg

Prosecutors gave the ex-Trump Organization CFO immunity in their hush-money probe in 2018.

Joe Tacopina

A vocal member of Trumps legal team, he began representing Trump earlier this year.

Susan Necheles

She is one of Trumps lawyers who was on the defense team in the Trump Organization trial.

Robert Costello

Cohens former legal adviser cast aspersions on Cohens credibility before the grand jury.

Karen McDougal

The model is another woman who received hush money for her involvement with Trump.

David Pecker

The former National Enquirer CEO has been linked to Cohens efforts to pay off Daniels and McDougal.

Link:
The data's clear: The indictment makes Republicans like Trump more - POLITICO