Campaign Report
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Campaign Report
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Trump faces more charges ahead of 2024
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Former President Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he had been contacted by the special counsel over his involvement in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, is the latest legal bombshell to roil the 2024 race.
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Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social platform, saying that special counsel Jack Smith had sent him a “target letter” informing him he’s a focus of the Justice Department investigation.
The receipt of such a letter indicates that Trump could soon face federal charges in the DOJ probe, which is investigating his efforts to stay in power following his loss to President Biden in the 2020 election.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an arrest and indictment,” Trump said in his statement.
It would be the third time Trump was charged with a crime this year, and the second time he was hit with federal charges. Yet the impact it could have on the 2024 election remains unclear, and Trump continues to lead in most state and national polling.
Some of his GOP rivals in the 2024 primary have already responded to the news, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) saying Trump “should have come out more forcefully” against the Capitol rioters on Jan. 6.
Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the U.N. and later criticized Trump in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, bemoaned the “drama” surrounding her ex-boss in an interview after news of the letter.
“It’s gonna keep on going,” she said in an interview on Fox News. “I mean the rest of this primary election is gonna be in reference to Trump. It’s gonna be about lawsuits, it’s gonna be about legal fees, it’s gonna be about judges, and it’s just gonna continue to be a further and further distraction.”
Trump himself is likely to further address the possible charges during a town hall in Iowa with Fox’s Sean Hannity. The event will be pre-taped and is set to air tonight at 9 p.m. ET.
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Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, we’re Julia Manchester, Caroline Vakil and Jared Gans. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington.
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Key election stories and other recent campaign coverage:
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Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis reacted to the news that former President Trump is the target of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, saying the former president should have been more forceful on that day but did not necessarily commit any crimes. “I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on. He should have come out more forcefully,” …
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Former President Trump maintained a sizable lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in a New Hampshire primary poll released Tuesday, despite dropping several points in the key early voting state. The Granite State Poll found that 37 percent of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire said they would support Trump, while 23 percent said they planned to back DeSantis. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott came in third place, …
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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley slammed the “drama” surrounding former President Trump as a “distraction” in the 2024 Republican primary race, after Trump said Tuesday that he had been notified that he is a target of the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation. “It’s gonna keep on going,” Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, said in an interview on Fox News. “I mean the rest of this primary election …
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Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
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- 88 days until Louisiana’s gubernatorial primary
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112 days until Kentucky’s and Mississippi’s gubernatorial generals
- 475 days until the 2024 general election
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DeSantis’s big CNN moment
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will do an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper set to air at 4 p.m. today after the Florida governor wraps up a South Carolina campaign stump. It will be the first time that DeSantis will chat with a major news network other than Fox since launching his campaign.
The interview comes at a critical moment in DeSantis’s campaign. Roughly eight weeks since the Florida Republican launched, he’s struggled to make a dent in 2024 GOP polling against former President Trump. Some local polls in South Carolina and New Hampshire in recent weeks have suggested he’s lost ground.
Adding to the lackluster polling, DeSantis’s campaign confirmed last week that it had shed less than a dozen staffers. Federal campaign filings from the latest quarter of fundraising indicated that his campaign was burning cash quickly — taking in $20.1 million in the last quarter and spending close to $8 million.
As our Caroline Vakil reported on Monday, DeSantis’s move to sit down with CNN suggests his campaign is revamping its strategy ahead of next month’s GOP debate in Milwaukee.
The strategy is being welcomed by many Republicans.
“I would not have advised him to have started doing this three or four or five months ago,” Republican strategist Justin Sayfie, who’s donated to DeSantis, told The Hill. “I think that there is a crescendo that will take place over the next six months and you want to peak at the right time,” he added.
But others see the CNN interview as a make-or-break moment for DeSantis.
If DeSantis does well, one Florida GOP operative said, “the Republican is gonna gain the attention of a lot of Republican voters. At the same time, if you don’t do well, it’s going to be a lot like a Twitter Spaces moment.”
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© Associated Press/Hans Pennink
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing intense backlash following comments he made during a press event last week that has led to accusations of antisemitism and racism.
For Kennedy, who launched an insurgent primary challenge against President Biden earlier this year, the timing is unfortunate. He had just come off a relatively strong fundraising quarter in which he raised $6 million, an impressive haul for a candidate seen as a long-hot.
But the latest news could spell trouble for the Democrat.
Audio obtained by The New York Post revealed that Kennedy said COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack Caucasian and Black people while mostly avoiding Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
Kennedy later sought to walk back his remarks, arguing that the Post story was mistaken and that he “never” argued the virus was engineered to target Jewish people nor that it was “deliberately engineered.”
But he failed to quell the fallout from his remarks, as Hanna Trudo reported on Monday. The House Democrats’ campaign arm declared him “unfit for office” and condemned his comments as antisemitic and fueling anti-Asian hatred. Members of Kennedy’s family, including his sister Kerry Kennedy and nephew, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.), also denounced his comments.
Kennedy has performed decently well in polls against Biden. He has received close to 20 percent in many polls despite Biden maintaining a large lead.
But Kennedy’s comments could prove to be a critical moment for his campaign, one that could cut into his numbers with such strong criticism from notable Democrats.
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Branch out with a different read from The Hill:
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CNN is set to air an interview Tuesday with a subject who has been in recent weeks a rare “get” for mainstream media outlets: Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The interview, which will be conducted by CNN’s lead political anchor Jake Tapper following a DeSantis campaign stop in South Carolina, is a significant moment for the candidate and the network. DeSantis is trying to break through the …
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Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly says after a recent conversation with the former president, she and Donald Trump are back on good terms. “Now one of the most interesting things I did was have a private audience with former President Donald Trump,” Kelly said on an episode of her podcast this week, referring to a meeting at a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) conference in Florida over the weekend. “When he came into …
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Local and state headlines regarding campaigns and elections:
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Election news we’ve flagged from other outlets:
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Efforts to deceive are a top concern among state election officials heading into 2024 (The Associated Press)
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Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025 (The New York Times)
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Key stories on The Hill right now:
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Republicans defended former President Trump after he announced Tuesday he was the target of the federal Jan. 6 investigation focusing on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, criticizing the government for his prosecution. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested Tuesday that the government was targeting Trump out of fear he could … Read more
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Former President Trump said Tuesday morning that he has been alerted he is a target of the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation focusing on his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. Trump said he received the “target letter” Sunday evening. “Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a … Read more
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Opinions related to campaigns and elections submitted to The Hill:
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You’re all caught up. See you next time!
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