On Tuesday morning, former President Donald Trump announced that he had been informed, by special counsel Jack Smith, that he is a target of the Biden Justice Department's criminal investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump's efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
Legal experts, and practical experience, say that such messages usually mean an indictment is on the way soon. Thus, it appears that Trump will face a second federal indictment to go with the local criminal indictment he faces in New York City, for a total of three indictments against the former president.
The first Trump indictment, the Manhattan indictment, appears to have had a significant effect on Trump's poll ratings in the 2024 Republican primary race. The short version is that Trump went up. Last summer, Trump led main challenger Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by about 30 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.
From November through March, after DeSantis's impressive 20-point reelection victory in Florida, Trump's lead shrank to about 15 points.
But almost immediately after the Manhattan indictment, which most Republicans viewed as flimsy in substance and political in motivation, Trump's lead over DeSantis shot back up to around 30 points. At this moment, Trump's lead in the RealClearPolitics average is 33.5 points.
The second Trump indictment, which is also the first federal indictment from Smith, in the classified documents case, did not have much of an effect on Trump's polls. Trump's rating in RealClearPolitics has bounced around in a very narrow range between 52 and 55 points since the indictment was announced. So far, it does not appear to have hurt Trump politically with Republicans.
In both Trump indictments, huge majorities of GOP voters have seen the charges against Trump as politically motivated. After the Manhattan indictment, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 93% of Republicans agreed that the charges were "mainly motivated by politics." After the classified documents indictment, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 81% of Republicans said politics was "driving the case."
Now, if a third indictment comes, one that is based on two political events, the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot, how could Republicans not view the new indictment as politically motivated? Starting with the standard caution that there is no way to predict, it seems reasonable to guess that Republican voters will view an indictment based on the 2020 election and Jan. 6 as even more political than the classified documents case and at least as political as the Manhattan case, which stemmed from the 2016 election.
We don't know when the new indictment will arrive, although it likely won't be long. We don't know specifically what charges it will include, although anti-Trump lawyers have published a draft "prosecution memo" that might well foretell Smith's charges.
In the draft memo, Trump would be charged with defrauding the United States with his claim that he won the 2020 election, with obstructing an official proceeding by seeking to have Congress throw the election results in some states back to those states, and with inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6. All the charges are felonies.
Perhaps Smith's indictment will track those charges, or perhaps it will take some other course. But it will be an indictment based on the presidential election and Jan. 6. Trump's supporters, and Republicans more generally, are already inclined to view the existing prosecutions of the former president as tainted by politics.
How could they fail to think the same thing about the next set of charges?
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