The double-whammy of one House committee referring Donald Trump for criminal prosecution and another debating release of his tax returns adds to an accumulation of political blows that some Republican strategists say will further hobble the former president’s already troubled bid for another run at the White House.
(Bloomberg) — The double-whammy of one House committee referring Donald Trump for criminal prosecution and another debating release of his tax returns adds to an accumulation of political blows that some Republican strategists say will further hobble the former president’s already troubled bid for another run at the White House.
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack made four criminal referrals against Trump on Monday for his role in the insurrection early last year, and the committee plans to release further evidence and transcripts detailing Trump’s actions leading up to and during the riot. The House Ways and Means Committee is deciding Tuesday what to do with six years’ worth of his tax returns.
The dual political hits add to what’s been a bad six-week stretch for Trump politically, during which he was blamed for the GOP’s disappointing midterm election results and had what critics called a lackluster 2024 campaign launch marred by controversies. Senior Senate Republicans have begun distancing themselves from him and urging the party to move on.
Republican strategists said while one incident might not cost Trump the support he needs to win again, the cumulative effect is catching up with him.
“The last few months, Trump has continued to shrink in the rear-view mirror, and now you’re starting to see Trump politically decomposing,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed, the former chief political strategist for the US Chamber of Commerce.
The criminal referrals and discussion about Trump’s taxes come as his potential 2024 rivals emphasize how the Trump-led GOP lost control of the House, Senate and White House and then fell far short of expectations in the 2022 congressional elections when his hand-picked candidates lost key races in what should have been a good election year for Republicans.
Trump remains influential in the party, and many of his hard-core supporters aren’t likely to care about the action by the Jan. 6 committee and his taxes, said GOP strategist Mike DuHaime. Trump has survived other scandals and has famously boasted he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue without losing supporters.
DuHaime said there’s no “silver bullet” that will defeat Trump. But the accumulation of negative news will cost him the good will of Republicans who backed him and his policies in 2016 and 2020 but aren’t hard-core supporters and are weary of the drama surrounding him, he said.
“People rallied around him when he was president, and I think they’re not doing so anymore because they just feel like it’s time to move on,” DuHaime said. “He’s been more trouble than he’s worth at this point, and I just think these are two more examples.”
Trump said in a Monday post son his Truth Social platform that he’s being targeted in “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party” that will backfire.
“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me,” Trump said.
But Trump is already facing challenges in his third bid for the presidency as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s widely expected to enter the 2024 GOP race, has seen his political standing rise. DeSantis beat Trump 52% to 38% in a Wall Street Journal poll last week, and a Suffolk University/USA Today survey also showed DeSantis easily defeating the former president — with 61% of GOP and conservative independent voters wanting a new standard-bearer.
Trump had fought release of the tax data, which the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee could approve on Tuesday, since the panel first requested it more than three years ago. The information, which could be released in the form of all of his tax returns or as a report summarizing key figures, will give much insight into his personal and corporate financial state from 2015 to 2020.
The former president said in a Sunday post that releasing his returns would “show relatively little.” He said his business is strong with “lots of cash, some of the greatest assets anywhere in the World, and very little debt” as well as being “strong on deductions and depreciation.”
Trump’s House Republicans allies are prepared to defend him. Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top GOP member on Ways and Means, has accused Democrats of weaponizing the tax code by digging into the former president’s tax documents.
A 2020 investigation by the New York Times, which obtained two decades’ worth of tax-return data for Trump and his companies showed the former president paid no income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing more money than he made.
Reed said if Trump’s taxes are released and indicate that he avoided paying taxes, it won’t necessarily affect his hard-core supporters but will show “he’s been scamming the system, and it’ll be another round of humiliation.”
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