Strategists in both parties agree that having Trump talking about election fraud and Jan. 6 hurts Republicans.
Former president Donald Trump and some of his legal advisers see an upside to the latest criminal case against him: He can use his upcoming trial to further argue his false claims of a stolen 2020 election.
The looming courtroom showdown is poised to push his insistence that election fraud occurred in 2020 toward the center of the 2024 presidential campaign, a dismaying prospect for Republicans and some of Trump’s advisers who have urged him to stop belaboring that subject. Trump’s defense team has signaled that they’ll focus on rebutting prosecutors’ allegations that Trump knew his fraud claims were false.
The strategy offers a small consolation to the former president, who spent Thursday suffering once again from the small indignities faced by indicted federal defendants. He was arraigned after roughly an hour-long wait inside a Washington courthouse just blocks from the site of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Trump spent the time occasionally rapping his knuckles on a table.
Trump has said that he wanted to subpoena people about the 2020 election and argue that he won, as prosecutors allege that he knew he lost and that his claims were false, according to people close to the former president, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
But the prospect of revisiting the validity of the last election has delighted Democrats, on top of causing consternation among Republican strategists, who see other, much more politically fruitful focal points for 2024. There are mountains of evidence — provided by top leaders in his campaign and government — that the election was not stolen from Trump, and the indictment paints a damning portrait of a man who was frequently informed of that reality.
By the time Trump left Washington on Thursday, after pleading not guilty, rain had started, and he left his car and was handed an umbrella by body man and co-defendant Waltine “Walt” Nauta, who then stood unprotected from the weather. Trump did not give a long, defiant speech as he did after the previous indictment, and he ignored shouted questions from reporters gathered on the tarmac.
“This is not the place that I left,” he said.
He staged no nighttime rallies after Thursday’s court appearance, breaking from a tradition he began with defiant speeches after his recent arraignments in New York and Miami on charges related to hush money payments and the mishandling of classified documents.
Trump’s campaign team was miffed by a lack of traffic support from local police after he arrived in Washington, forcing the motorcade to weave through rush-hour traffic. Other motorists attempted to change lanes between the motorcade, showing less deference than typical for an average funeral procession. The welcome from onlookers at the courthouse was occasionally hostile, with several middle fingers from bikers and spectators along the highway from the airport. There was a Biden flag on a corner near the courthouse.
The former president said it was a “very sad day for America.” His lawyers have vowed to aggressively fight the charges that he engaged in criminal schemes in an attempt to overturn the election results.
“We will re-litigate every single issue in the 2020 election in the context of this litigation,” Trump attorney John Lauro said Tuesday during an interview with Fox News.
