Donald Trump found something to celebrate on Thursday after tacitly admitting to keeping classified presidential records without the permission of the National Archives in a legal filing the day earlier.
In an interview with a right-wing broadcaster, the former president pointed out how his poll numbers among Republican voters have rebounded in recent weeks amid news of the raid and new criminal investigation targeting him.
“I don’t even like saying it because it sounds so trivial...my poll numbers have gone through the roof because of [the raid],” he said. “I’ve never been involved in an event that’s driven me up like this.”
His comments reflected how even amid a criminal investigation that could have serious consequences, his focus remains on 2024 and a recent poll of GOP primary voters that found his support rising and the support of his closest hypothetical rival, Ron DeSantis, falling in the wake of the FBI’s search.
In a July Politico/Morning Consult poll, 53 per cent of Republican voters and right-leaning independents said they’d vote for Mr Trump in the 2024 primary if it was held that day. But after the Mar-a-Lago search, that number shot up to 57 per cent. Support for Mr DeSantis dropped from 23 per cent down to 17 per cent.
But other polls in recent months have shown that a majority of Americans overall are hoping for new candidates — from Republicans and Democrats both — in 2024.
Mr Trump’s latest statements in response to the FBI’s raid follow his own legal filing on Wednesday regarding the DoJ’s lengthy argument against the appointment of a special master to review documents seized from his home. The former president has made claims of executive privilege over the documents, an argument the DoJ rejects as not based in legal theory and meaningless because the White House such documents from the Justice Department under that privilege.
The former president’s defences for his handling of documents have evolved rapidly over the past several weeks. His defenders in the media brazenly declare that the “secret” and “top secret” files taken from his residence were not of any national significance, that he had declassified them before leaving office, and that the documents are “his”, instead of government property which they clearly are under law.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has alleged in its most recent filing that persons close to Mr Trump including the president himself may have moved some documents from where they were said to be stored in an attempt to obstruct investigators.
The ex-president remains the only hypothetical 2024 GOP candidate with a mathematical shot of winning the nomination with the potential exception of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, if polling of the primary field is to be believed.
