While Democrats and progressives welcomed Donald Trump’s federal indictment on four charges relating to his attempted election subversion, the former president’s chief rival for the 2024 Republican nomination rallied to his defense.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is a distant second to Trump in primary polling, swiftly issued a statement that notably did not mention Trump by name.
“As president,” DeSantis said, “I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.”
DeSantis, who has indicated he will pardon Trump if elected, said he had not seen the indictment handed down by the special counsel, Jack Smith, regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020. Nonetheless, DeSantis complained that the charges were brought in Washington DC, a Democratic city.
“One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicisation of the rule of law,” DeSantis said, adding that he would “enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington DC to their home districts”, away from juries “reflective of the swamp mentality”.
That was an echo of Trump’s chief response – to claim political persecution – to what are now 78 criminal charges against him, including 40 federal counts in Florida, Trump’s home state, over his retention of classified records and 34 New York state counts over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
Despite those charges, the prospect of more over election subversion in Georgia, ongoing investigations of his businesses and a defamation suit in which he was found liable for sexual assault, Trump leads national Republican polling by more than 30 points and by wide margins in early voting states.
In a New York Times-Siena College poll this week, Trump attracted 54% support to 17% for DeSantis. The next three candidates received 3% each.
One of those candidates, Mike Pence, featured in the indictment in Washington. Trump was said to have told his vice-president, before January 6, “You’re too honest.” Pence refused to help Trump overturn his defeat.
On Tuesday, Pence said the indictment against Trump was “an important reminder [that] anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States”. He also said that though Trump was entitled to be presumed innocent, “his candidacy means more talk about January 6 and more distractions”.
Another candidate on 3%, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, avoided using Trump’s name while claiming “Biden’s justice department” was “hunt[ing] Republicans, while protecting Democrats”.
Stronger statements came from rank outsiders. One, Will Hurd, stuck to a position which last week saw him booed in Iowa.
“Trump’s presidential bid is driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills,” the former Texas congressman said. “Furthermore, his denial of the 2020 election results and actions on January 6 show he’s unfit for office.”
Hurd pleaded: “As Republicans we need to prioritise offering solutions to difficult issues affecting all Americans … if we make the upcoming election about Trump, we are giving Joe Biden another four years in the White House.”
Such calls seemed sure to fall on deaf ears, within Washington as well as without.
Byron Donalds of Florida, a Trump ally on the hard right of the House, claimed Trump was the victim of “selective use of the full breadth of the federal government” while prosecutors “concoct[ed] sweetheart deals for Hunter [Biden], Hillary [Clinton] and the rest of the Democrat darlings”.
Donald said his own support for Trump “grows with every egregious attempt by Biden’s justice department to interfere with the 2024 presidential election”.
The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, called the indictment an attempt “to distract from news” about Republican allegations of corruption involving Hunter Biden, the president’s son, “and attack the frontrunner” to face Biden next year.
Reaction among Democrats reflected the deep divide in US politics. The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who oversaw two impeachments of Trump, said the charges outlined “a sinister plot”.
The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, said: “The third indictment of Mr Trump illustrates in shocking detail that the violence of [January 6] was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people.”
The indictment, they said, was “a stark reminder … that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law”.
Outside Congress, the Fox News host Jesse Watters, a key opinion-former on the right, said Trump “just believed the election was stolen and he was trying to use everything in his power to push it as far as he possibly could all the way to the end. It just seems like that’s politics. Isn’t that just politics?”
Others thought Trump’s actions were far more than merely political.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the new charges “the most significant [Trump] has yet faced because they address the most serious offense he committed: trying to block the peaceful transfer of power and keep himself in office.
“… Had he succeeded, it would have effectively ended our almost two-and-a-half-century experiment in democratic self-governance … holding Trump accountable … pulls our democracy back from the precipice.”
Meagan Hatcher-Mays, of the campaigning group Indivisible, pointed to why Republicans still back Trump, who polls level with Biden: “Republicans only care about their power, and they will stop at nothing to stay in it. Trump is … just the loud, obnoxious tip of the iceberg.”
Michael Fanone, a former Washington police officer seriously injured on January 6, was typically forthright.
“I saw the Trump-fueled Maga attack before my eyes,” he said. “It was calculated, premeditated and malicious. It disgusts me that House Republicans are heinously coming to the defense of Trump’s criminal behavior while putting up the foundation of our democracy as collateral.”
