Newsfront
Trump’s Legal Battles Just Make Him Stronger
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Many voters see him fighting a corrupt establishment. BY JOHN FUND
t’s hard to escape the con- clusion that a major reason Donald Trump is waltzing into the Republican nomination is
because he keeps getting indicted. Republican voters have rallied
around the former president dur- ing his legal fights, and they are not ready to abandon him. No less of an expert than Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who quit the race for the GOP nomination in Jan- uary, agrees. “You saw the increase in his sup-
port when he had the indictment, and every subsequent indictment seems to get a little bit more support . . . it’s a very clear correlation,” he told a New Hampshire radio station. Trump was indicted for the first
time by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last March on criminal charges that even some of Trump’s fiercest critics admit are legally dubi- ous.
DeSantis was 15.1 points behind
Trump in the RealClearPolitics poll- ing average. Within three weeks, Trump’s lead in the GOP race had
8 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2024
criminal investigations of Trump. The judge in the case, Aileen Can-
more than doubled, to 31.6, on April 18, and he never looked back. Trump now also leads President
Joe Biden in almost every swing state that will decide the 2024 election. None of Trump’s four possible
criminal trials will likely go to a jury before the November election. Here’s where they stand:
MANHATTAN ‘HUSH MONEY’ The Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to obscure a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Almost always such cases are handled with simple fines and penalties, but this criminal case is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
MAR-A-LAGO DOCUMENTS Trump was indicted last June on 37 felony counts related to obstructing justice and illegally retaining national security information after leaving the White House. The case was brought by special
counsel Jack Smith, who was appoint- ed to oversee the Justice Department’s
non, has scheduled the trial for May, but it is likely to be delayed.
JAN. 6 Special counsel Smith also had a grand jury indict Trump over alleged efforts to interfere with the peaceful trans- fer of power after the 2020 election to Biden, including the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith says Trump tried to obstruct
“a bedrock function of the U.S. govern- ment: the nation’s process of collect- ing, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” Trump has dismissed the allega-
tions: “Why didn’t they bring this ridiculous case two-and-a-half years ago? They wanted it right in the middle of my campaign, that’s why!” Trump tells supporters at his rallies. The trial, originally scheduled to
start in March, has been postponed indefinitely by federal Judge Tanya Chutkan.
GEORGIA ELECTION INTERFERENCE Fani Willis, the district attorney from Fulton County — which includes
JEFFERSON SIEGEL-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
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