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Will Donald Trump’s federal indictment hurt his chances of winning 2024 US presidential race? Pundits split
- Latest development in Justice Department investigation likely to boost ex-president’s polling and ‘allows him to claim victimhood’, analysts say
- But some in crowded Republican field could paint Trump as unfit for office and anathema to independent and centrist voters
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Robert Delaneyin Washington
The historic federal indictment of former US president Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s front-running candidate for next year’s election, has pundits split over how his latest legal tangle will affect his chances to retake the White House from Joe Biden.
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The US Justice Department unsealed a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents on Friday, including allegations that Trump described a Pentagon “plan of attack” and shared a classified map related to a military operation.
Most of the charges against Trump, who was indicted along with Walt Nauta, an aide and close adviser to the former president, relate to “wilful retention of national defence information”. Others include one count of “conspiracy to obstruct justice” and another of “corruptly concealing a document or record”.
This marks the second criminal case for Trump, and may not be the last. He is due to go on trial in New York next March in a state case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn actress. Trump is also is under investigation for his role in the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
Meanwhile, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, has been investigating allegations that Trump tried to convince Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the southeastern US state’s governor, Brian Kemp, both Republicans, to deny that Biden won their state in the 2020 presidential election.
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And last month, a jury in federal court in Manhattan decided in a civil lawsuit that he must pay US$5 million in damages for sexually abusing former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her by branding her a liar.
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