Republicans See Political Motives in Trump Indictment, Others See Security Risk: CBS Poll

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump gestures to the audience after delivering remarks in Greensboro, N.C., on June 10, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Republicans see political motives behind the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent indictment of President Donald Trump, while others say that Trump’s possession of the documents posed a national security risk, a CBS poll found.

Trump said on June 8 that his attorneys were informed of the indictment by DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith in connection to the investigation into the handling of classified documents. Trump is the first former U.S. president in history to face criminal action at the federal level. The announcement followed a raid by the FBI last year of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that allegedly discovered several classified documents in his possession.

Smith later announced 37 charges against Trump in relation to the documents.

Following the indictment, Trump seemed unfazed. During campaign appearances in Georgia and North Carolina, he referred to the indictment as a “joke,” but said it had nonetheless been good for his polling and fundraising.

According to a new CBS poll, most Republican voters are inclined to agree.

Seventy-six percent said that they saw purely political motives behind the indictment. Only 12 percent said that they thought Trump’s possession of the documents posed a national security threat, while another 12 percent said that they thought that there was a national security threat but that the motives behind the indictment were political.

By corollary, a minority of likely Republican primary voters, 38 percent, said they thought there was a national security risk in Trump’s continued possession of the disputed documents.

However, non-Republicans expressed greater concerns: 80 percent of non-Republican voters said they saw a security risk in Trump continuing to hold on to the documents.

Most Republicans also say that the indictment doesn’t change their feelings toward Trump either way.

Fourteen percent told CBS it changes their opinion of Trump for the better, 7 percent say it changes their opinion for the worse, and 18 percent say it depends.

But most, 61 percent, say it doesn’t change anything, and they think he should still be allowed to serve as president again even if he’s convicted.

Only 20 percent of likely Republican primary voters say that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to serve again if he’s convicted; the other 80 percent say he should be allowed.

Trump himself has called foul over the charges, contrasting his treatment with the treatment given to figures like President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over their mishandling of classified material.

Like Trump, Biden has faced allegations of mishandling classified documents taken from the White House.

“Biden’s got 1,850 boxes [of classified documents]. He’s got boxes in Chinatown, D.C.,” Trump said. “He’s got boxes all over the place. He doesn’t know what the hell to do with them, and he’s fighting them on the boxes.”

Likewise, Trump noted that Clinton, his 2016 rival for the presidency, was accused of destroying a laptop with classified government secrets in order to avoid complying with a congressional subpoena.

“Our law enforcement has become weaponized at a level never seen before,” Trump said.

Timing Raises Eyebrows

Many Republicans raised questions about the timing of the indictment.

It came on the same day that FBI Director Christopher Wray acceded to a GOP demand to share a document alleging that Biden took a foreign bribe while vice president. Specifically, Biden is accused of taking $5 million to help get Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin—who was investigating the energy firm Burisma, to which the president’s son, Hunter Biden, has connections—fired.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on Twitter that the document, which she observed on June 8 as part of Wray’s deal with Republicans, comes from “the FBI’s most trusted credible informant.” If the charges prove true, they could be a precursor to further legal action by House Republicans.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said that he believes the two are connected.

“Imagine being naive enough to believe that the Biden Bribe evidence and Trump indictment happening the same day was a coincidence,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has worked closely with his House analog about the bribery allegations against Biden, echoed the sentiment.

“DOJ indicts former President/candidate Trump [the] SAME DAY DOJ/FBI restricts access to unnecessarily redacted Biden allegations,” Grassley said in a tweet. “And they wonder why ppl think there [are] two standards for justice.”

Rivals Weigh In

Following the announcement of the charges against Trump related to his handling of classified documents, several of his GOP rivals have found themselves in the position of defending their main hurdle to the presidential nomination.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said it demonstrated “two tiers of justice: one for Trump on government document retention, another for Biden.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) also condemned what he called the “weaponization of the Department of Justice against a former president.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has clashed publicly with Trump on several occasions, called it an example of “prosecutorial overreach, double standards, and vendetta politics.”

GOP Concerns of DOJ ‘Politicization’

Republicans have increasingly expressed concerns over the way Biden’s DOJ is run, saying that the agency has become politicized against Biden’s enemies. An ongoing GOP investigation under the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has been probing the issue, and has published a series of reports alleging abuse of resources.

A recent whistleblower report claimed that the FBI had become “enveloped in politicization,” and had engaged in “serious abuses” of its authority.

For instance, the report claimed that the FBI had focused attention on traditionalist and Latin Mass Catholic communities, dubbing them “radical-traditionalist Catholics.” These communities were allegedly pegged as a hotbed of “white supremacist” activity and a potential terror threat, and the FBI expressed the intention to place informants in these parishes.

Republicans have also pointed to an Oct. 4, 2021, memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland that directed the FBI to partner with local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to identify parental threats at school board meetings against faculty and “prosecute them when appropriate.”

The memo came after many students across the country began learning remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving parents a window into their children’s education. Several discovered that controversial, disputed ideas about sexuality, gender, and race were being taught as fact, leading to a spurt of parents showing up at school board meetings to protest the content.

The FBI responded to the memo by allegedly placing “threat tags,” indicating the possibility of a terror or violent crime incident, on parents who attended school board meetings, leading to concerns that the FBI was cracking down on First Amendment-protected speech.