Will Trump Be Indicted Into Office?

In short yes.

Will Trump Be Indicted Into Office?

TV ads focused on his legal troubles backfired, so they never aired.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

Nov. 6, 2023 6:25 pm ET

Donald Trump in court on Monday. PHOTO: SONIA MOSKOWITZ GORDON/ZUMA PRESS

‘The people call Donald J. Trump.” So began Monday’s episode of the Democratic Party’s favorite legal drama, as Mr. Trump took the witness stand in Manhattan court. The judge in this civil case has already ruled that Mr. Trump’s business empire gave inflated asset numbers to lenders, including by almost tripling the square footage of his Trump Tower residence.

“They were not really documents that the banks paid much attention to,” Mr. Trump told the court, according to news accounts. He argued that his assets, including his brand value, were actually higher than reported. Why was his Trump Tower triplex claimed as 30,000 square feet, instead of the actual 11,000? He speculated that perhaps the bigger figure didn’t exclude elevator shafts and other nonusable space, or maybe it included the building’s roof, to which he has access.

The trial has consequences for Mr. Trump’s business and net worth, but it won’t matter much politically. New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on a promise to launch an investigation into Mr. Trump, and most GOP voters have already dismissed the case as an example of politicized justice.

For Mr. Trump’s critics who believe the legal system can knock him out of the 2024 presidential election, his civil testimony Monday was a light amuse-bouche. The four-course meal to follow is the criminal process, after Mr. Trump’s state indictment in New York, two charge sheets from the feds, and then another in Georgia. Yet despite it all—or more accurately, because of it all—Mr. Trump is dominating the Republican primary polling.

Is Mr. Trump’s candidacy really being floated by his prosecutions? Check out the recent reporting on Win It Back PAC. An article in Politico last week says the group tested four TV ads focused on Mr. Trump’s legal travails. “All four ads tested failed to move support away from Trump,” a research memo concluded. Even more fascinating, three of the commercials increased Mr. Trump’s support.

Two of the TV ads “backfired across almost all demographic groups.” One of those was the most pointed argument tested. “I’ve been with Trump from the start,” the narrator says. “But truthfully, I don’t know what happens if he is convicted while he is running.”

Those TV ads never ran, no surprise. Can President Biden now pay to air them? That’s a joke, but it fits the strategy of Mr. Biden, who is counting on a 2020 rematch nearly as much as Mr. Trump. This could be a serious blunder.

The Win It Back PAC ads were tested among Republican primary voters, but the backfire effect was larger with respondents who identified as “NOT Very Conservative.” It isn’t so hard to believe that some independents might agree that the prosecutions are politically motivated and unfair.

Throw in this weekend’s Siena College-New York Times poll, which shows Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump in five key swing states. The political reality is hard to deny. Mr. Trump’s conduct is often lamentable, self-destructive, inexplicable, and sometimes all three. Why did he refuse to turn over those classified files, and did he in fact send a henchman to delete Mar-a-Lago’s security tapes after getting a subpoena? If true, it’s foolish beyond words.

But Mr. Trump’s antagonists, instead of trying to defeat him politically, have unleashed the criminal justice system against him in every way possible. The former President received a polling boost in April when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought criminal charges that even some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics admit are legally dubious.

Mr. Trump’s opponents thought that prosecuting him would bring him low. Instead it is powering his candidacy, as he runs as a political martyr. It is helping him in the campaign for the GOP nomination, and it could yet get him back to the White House.