REPUBLICANS WILL LIKELY SEE POLITICS IN YET ANOTHER TRUMP INDICTMENT. 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.
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.
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.