Christian Smith
Senate Republicans nervously await the verdict in former President Trump’s Manhattan trial and warn it could have a significant impact on the election.
GOP lawmakers say failure to secure a conviction would be a major embarrassment for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which would strengthen Trump.
But they admit they don’t know how a conviction would play out, given that between 20% and 30% of Republican primary voters said they would not consider Trump fit for office if he were convicted of a crime.
Republican senators say Trump’s campaign faces a high degree of uncertainty about any consequences resulting from the embarrassing trial.
A conviction or acquittal could have more impact on the campaign than either of the two debates that Trump and President Biden have agreed to for late June and early September.
Some Republican senators worry that a guilty verdict would further damage Trump’s limited appeal with swing voters, especially college-educated and suburban women, who turned away from Trump in 2020.
“I think for his strong supporters, I think they’re just going to look at this and say, ‘See? Is not fair.’ On the other hand, there are people in the middle, there are independents, who are probably looking at this and saying, ‘I wasn’t sure if I could support him again or not. I don’t like what President Biden is doing. They may have doubts” about voting for Trump, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she would normally think that any candidate convicted of a crime would essentially be eliminated from the race, but acknowledged that Trump defied previous predictions about his political demise.
“I would have thought that we didn’t even need to go to trial, we wouldn’t even need to reach a guilty verdict — the fact that the Republican candidate would be subjected to a trial like this would have had an impact,” she said.
Exit polls of Republican voters in multiple state primaries show that a significant portion of the electorate, including Republican voters, would not consider Trump fit for office if he were convicted of a serious crime.
“We’ll see. I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Murkowski said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that so many Republicans still think Biden wasn’t properly elected.”
“We’ll see if these numbers are true or if people think it’s just not important. I think it would be unfortunate if that were the case,” she said of polls that show many voters would consider a criminal conviction a serious factor in evaluating candidates.
A national survey conducted by the Public Opinion Research Laboratory at the University of North Florida last month found that Trump could lose 10% of his supporters if convicted.
The survey of likely voters conducted April 8-20 found that 9% of Trump voters would be less likely to vote for him if convicted.
It mirrors several exit polls conducted earlier this year showing that many voters — including Republicans — would view a criminal conviction as disqualifying Trump from returning to the Oval Office.
In March, more than 3 in 10 Republican primary voters in North Carolina and 37% of Republican primary voters in Virginia said they would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he were convicted of a crime.
These responses were in line with 31 percent of Republican voters in Iowa, 42 percent of Republican voters in the New Hampshire primary, and 36 percent of Republican voters in the South Carolina primary who said Trump would not be fit for office if was condemned.
Those numbers are giving Democrats hope at a time when they face political headwinds from Biden’s low poll numbers and voter concerns about the current president’s age and ability to manage the economy.
Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin (Ill.) said voters “certainly care” if Trump is a potential criminal.
“Two out of three [voters] saying if he was convicted of a crime it would affect how they would vote,” he said of the broad electorate. “I can understand that.
“Of course it would be a shameful situation, the first time in the history of the United States a president [is] convicted of a crime,” he said.
Trial judge Juan Merchan announced Monday that the trial will take a few days more than expected to close and that prosecutors and defense lawyers are likely to present their closing arguments next week.
Although Trump’s legal team has managed to poke holes in the credibility of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, legal experts still think prosecutors have a good chance of winning.
The evidence against Trump includes a voice recording of him directing Cohen to pay cash, as well as 18 witnesses and records of text messages and emails.
Some Republicans argue that Trump will receive a major political boost if Bragg fails to convict the nation’s highest-profile defendant.
“Their grand attempt to remove Trump from the presidential campaign will be a huge failure. They basically bet their entire case on a few confirmed liars,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referring to the testimony of adult film star Stormy Daniels and Cohen.
Cornyn said if Bragg doesn’t get a conviction, it would “absolutely” help Trump’s presidential campaign.
“What the Justice Department and the Biden administration don’t understand is that every time you continue to pursue President Trump in what appears to be [a] two-tier justice system, you are helping him make his case that he is a victim,” Cornyn added. “So I think it’s a high-risk proposition.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) predicted that Trump could win the election with an “avalanche” if convicted because the public reaction would be so strong.
“It seems so horrible and no fair-minded person believes” that Trump deserves to be convicted of a crime on charges that combine the crimes of falsifying business records with campaign finance violations, he said.
“This really is legal warfare and I think it is very bad. I think, in fact, if Trump is convicted, it could actually help him,” he added.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) stated, “I would be willing to state with metaphysical certainty that Donald J. Trump will not be convicted in this trial.”
And some Republicans think voters’ opinions about Trump are already so entrenched that a guilty verdict or acquittal could be forgotten until Election Day in November.
“I think most people view this case as a fabricated case that the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office stopped prosecuting a long time ago, and I think that’s how people view the case. Whatever the outcome, I just don’t think it’s going to move the needle much,” said Senate Republican leader John Thune (SD).
But other Republicans recognize that it could be unpredictable in the presidential race.
“How are people going to vote in November? Ask me sometime, then,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).
Al Weaver contributed.
