CNN
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Former President Donald Trump will return to the campaign trail on Saturday, traveling to Georgia and North Carolina to deliver speeches at a pair of state Republican conventions as news of his federal indictment affects the party’s 2024 presidential race.
The pre-planned stops come a day after the Justice Department unveiled its indictment laying out the government’s case that Trump and aide Walt Nauta mishandled classified national security documents.
Trump’s speeches will mark his first public outings since being impeached for the second time in less than three months, with investigations into election interference efforts in Georgia and his actions around January 6, 2021 in Washington threatening with new legal problems.
The visits will give Trump a chance to respond to the charges in campaign style as he faces both the political and legal fronts. The former president is scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Miami on Tuesday, where the charges against him will be read to him.
So far, Trump has portrayed his prosecution as a political effort to stall his bid for the presidency. He has described special prosecutor Jack Smith as “messed up” and the case against him as a “hoax,” while accusing President Joe Biden of similarly mishandling classified documents.
“I had nothing to hide, not even now. Nobody said I wasn’t allowed to look at the personal records I brought with me from the White House. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said on his social media platform on Friday Social Truth.
Trump released a four-minute video late Thursday repeating many of his past claims, including that the Justice Department is being weaponized and that the investigations into him amount to “election interference.”
“I’m an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said in the video.
News of the former president’s indictment on Thursday broke at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with the belief that it would benefit him politically as conservatives rallied around him.
Trump spent Friday morning in Bedminster playing golf with Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez while his allies made rounds of phone calls to bolster support for the former president.
After the indictment was revealed Friday, concern began to set in, a source familiar with Bedminster’s mood told CNN, as Trump aides began to acknowledge the legal implications. His team still believes Trump is likely to benefit politically, at least in the short term, the source said, but aides have become more wary of how the indictment will play out legally.
Trump has long avoided legal culpability in his personal, professional and political life. He has settled a number of private civil lawsuits over the years and paid out of disputes involving the Trump Organization. As president, he was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House but avoided conviction by the Senate.
But after he left office, the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the alleged withholding of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election cast dark clouds over the former president Smith’s investigation into the January 6, 2021, and efforts to nullify the election is still ongoing.
In March, the Manhattan district attorney in New York indicted Trump on charges related to hush money payments to a former adult star. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce in August whether charges are pending in her investigation into attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election been
During the campaign, many of Trump’s 2024 Republican presidential rivals responded to news of his impeachment by attacking the Justice Department, another indication that they see advantages among conservative primary voters in defending a former president who remains popular among the party base.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponizing federal law enforcement” as he vowed, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, eliminate political bias and end weaponry once and for all.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence had asked the Department of Justice to release the indictment against his former boss. After doing so, he did not comment on its content while campaigning in New Hampshire.
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, called the indictment “prosecutorial overreach” in a statement Friday, adding that it was time to move on “beyond drama and endless distractions.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another close Trump ally and adviser who has become his leading critic in the 2024 race, called the details of the indictment “reprehensible.”
“This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.”
“The biggest issue for our country is, is this the kind of behavior we want from someone who wants to be president of the United States?” Christie said.
Another Trump critic, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the former president should drop out of the race “for the good of the country.”
“This is unprecedented that we have a former president criminally indicted for mishandling classified information, for obstruction of justice. It’s obviously going to be an issue during the campaign,” Hutchinson told Tapper Friday in a separate interview.
“For the good of the country, he doesn’t need this distraction. The country doesn’t need this distraction either.”
