How Trump indictment could shake up the 2024 presidential race

Unprecedented. Historic. Outrageous. “Legal voodoo.”

Former President Donald Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury is more than a legal blockbuster — it’s also a political earthquake.

With Trump already running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the indictment amounts to a grenade tossed into the biggest political drama in the world today.

The former president is an unquestioned master of turning all news — good, bad or anywhere in between — into short-term political manna from heaven.

But not even the most eloquent talking heads and powerful political leaders can predict how the legal dance may play out in the months ahead.

The Republican Party has united in virtual lockstep behind Trump.

After spending several weeks denouncing the grand jury probe, GOP leaders erupted in anger at the news that the panel voted Thursday to indict the former president.

GOP lawmakers and Fox News hosts and even vocal Republican critics of Trump have raced to defend the former president as the victim of a shameful political witch hunt.

Without seeing the indictment, which remains under seal, they have denounced Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a liberal hack with an ax to grind.

The outrage mirrors Trump’s rising popularity in recent polling of Republican voters.

A Fox News poll published Wednesday showed Trump with the support of more than 50% of GOP primary voters, an 11-point rise from February.

By a more than 3 to 1 margin, GOP voters told the Quinnipiac poll in recent days that criminal charges should not disqualify Trump from running.

“It’s putting people back into their box and for now that’s good for Trump,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. “They are saying, ‘It’s all a witch hunt. Where is his crown of thorns?’”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has sought to use the case to underscore his right-wing credentials even as he considers launching a White House bid against Trump.

He lashed out at the probe as “un-American” and vowed Florida would not cooperate with any effort to extradite Trump to New York.

“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” DeSantis tweeted.

The indictment puts DeSantis in a tricky political bind as he tries to distance himself from Trump without angering his MAGA loyalist supporters.

In his reaction to the indictment, DeSantis avoided the oblique criticism he leveled at Trump last week when he said he did not “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence described Bragg’s push to indict Trump as an “outrage,” asserting that it amounts to a political prosecution.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s most prominent confirmed Republican primary rival, denounced the indictment as “more about revenge than it is about justice.”

Generally, no. But former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a potential dark horse GOP presidential contender, said Trump should withdraw from the race after being indicted.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had not commented as of Friday. The Trump nemesis, who once declared the former president was “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, is recovering from a fall.

He isn’t touching this one.

“I’m not going to talk about Trump’s indictment,” Biden told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

That’s the million dollar question.

Trump is betting that playing the role of martyr will allow him to lock up the GOP nomination with a wave of sympathy.

He may not be wrong. In the 24 hours after he was indicted in a Manhattan District Court, his campaign reportedly raised $4 million, with more than 25% of it coming from first-time donors, Trump’s team said.

“Trump wins in court and he wins the election — that’s how this ends,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News, describing the case as “literally legal voodoo.”

But some analysts warn it might be too early to hand him the GOP nod, let alone the presidency.

“Short term, this definitely helps him, but long-term, I don’t think it’s possible to know,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist.

Ron Brownstein, a political analyst, said Republicans were rallying around the former president. “But there is a cumulative effect that’s going to weigh on Trump eventually,” he said.

The charges seem certain to energize Democrats, many of whom have been waiting for years to dance on Trump’s political grave.

“The peril for Republicans is that they are catering to the 30% that is their base, but there is a majority of Americans who don’t like to see this,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist.

The GOP could fall into a trap by backing Trump without knowing the extent of his legal woes.

The full extent of the evidence and the charges that Trump may face in the hush money case remain mysteries.

And the hush money matter is one of four criminal cases encircling Trump, including the Georgia election interference case in which a prosecutor said two months ago that a charging decision was “imminent.”

Special counsel Jack Smith appears to be in advanced stages of a probe into Trump’s potential defiance of a subpoena to return classified documents to the government. Smith is also investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“They have put themselves in a self-constructed box,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor of public policy at CUNY’s Baruch College. “They are saying one thing now with indictment No. 1. What about when it’s Indictment No. 2 and No. 3?”

Jay Townsend, a New York political consultant who advises candidates from both parties, called the Manhattan case a “pin prick” for Trump and predicted it will not be the center of attention by 2024.

“It’s going to be the stuff he did in Georgia,” Townsend said, “and the stuff he did to foment the insurrection.”

Bragg was elected in 2021 as the first Black Manhattan district attorney. He is not due to face voters again until 2025.

It appears too early to assess whether Bragg’s handling of the Trump case might affect his potential reelection.

New York Democrats may use Trump as a weapon in 2024 as they work to retake several swing House seats that Republicans won in the midterms.

With Tim Balk