Juan Williams: Will an impeachment help or hurt Donald Trump in 2024?

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It pains me to say this, but even if former President Trump is indicted soon, it may not have any effect on his campaign for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

In fact, an indictment could help him with many Republicans. He can start every rally by claiming he is the victim of a political “witch hunt.”

Even with several possible impeachments against him, Trump remains the frontrunner for his party’s nomination. According to a RealClearPolitics average of the latest polls, Trump leads with 43 percent support, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is at 31 percent.

The question now is whether an indictment will lower Trump’s poll numbers.

I wouldn’t bet on it.

Most Republican voters continue to ignore his blatant lies about a stolen 2020 election. Even the blood-smelling GOP candidates, as they position themselves to enter the 2024 Republican primary, have -reluctance to call attention to Trump’s legal problems; they fear angering GOP voters who are more loyal to Trump than the party.

DeSantis even refused to respond aggressively to Trump’s sharing of posts of photos of her when she was a private school teacher. Trump supporters accused DeSantis of “grooming” young women “with alcohol.” Trump lent added glamor to the photo by writing: “That’s not Ron, is he? He would never do such a thing!”

DeSantis’ only response was that he doesn’t “spend my time trying to discredit other Republicans.”

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and the first Republican official to challenge Trump for the nomination, declined to point out the heavy baggage Trump will bring to the party’s efforts to win the White House. “I don’t focus on President Trump,” he said when asked about his opponent on “Fox News Sunday.” He blamed the “media” for wanting him to address how he differs from Trump, adding: “I’m focused on Joe Biden.”

But there is a chance that an official indictment of Trump in any of the four pending investigations could force Republicans to consider the wisdom of nominating Trump for a third time.

Under the indictment, Trump cannot pretend he is a candidate who lost the presidency in 2020 and now faces the risk of prison before Inauguration Day 2025.

Trump’s previous response to allegations of illegal activities has been to say that he is being treated unfairly by the media, Democrats or the Republican establishment. But after the conviction of several Trump supporters for involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Trump’s claim of unfair treatment looks weak. How can he say that he was treated wrongly when he was not charged with a case that resulted in the imprisonment of his supporters?

“Take the more than 900 individuals who were convicted or pleaded guilty to the January 6 offenses,” wrote Alan B. Morrison, of George Washington University Law School, in a piece last week for Bloomberg Law. “They will rightly demand that equal treatment requires that Trump defend himself in court, especially since many of them told the judge who sentenced them that they attacked the Capitol because their leader encouraged them to do so. “

Morrison added that equal treatment also means the Justice Department must follow its consistent practice of indicting people who knowingly mishandle classified documents and defy court orders to return them.

That standard for equal application of the law, Morrison wrote, “also distinguishes the Trump case” from the apparently accidental filing of classified documents by former Vice President Mike Pence and President Biden.

True, but we’re talking about Trump. He has a history of running away from political and legal trouble.

He was impeached twice. Both times, Senate Republicans, fearing a backlash from his supporters, turned a blind eye to the evidence and allowed him to remain in the White House.

Then there’s special counsel Robert Mueller’s damning report. Trump escaped damage from Mueller’s discovery that his 2016 campaign had contacts with the Russians.

He survived thanks to what a federal judge called “a one-sided narrative about the Mueller report,” released by Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general at the time. Judge Reggie B. Walton said Barr “made a calculated attempt to influence the public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump” with his favorable accounts while withholding the release of the report until a month later.

Trump recently managed to deflect possible charges for illegally handling classified documents by saying he was treated unfairly when the FBI raided his Florida home and found the documents.

Now, he is attacking the prosecutors. Just last week he accused Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, of being “racist” and engaging in a “political witch hunt” against her for investigating her alleged interference in the number of vote in the 2020 state presidential election.

If Trump is accused of meddling in the Georgia election, he will likely again say he was unfairly elected.

When the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, reopened the investigation into Trump’s involvement with a payment to a porn star, Trump labeled him a “Radical Left.”

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However, all that bluster may not work.

After all, would Republicans vote for a man in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs?

Some are, of course… but enough of them?

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