NEW YORK (AP) — The Republican Party quickly and strongly rallied behind Donald Trump in the hours after federal agents seized classified documents from his Florida estate this summer.
Four months later, that sense of intensity and urgency was missing — at least for the time being — after the Jan. 6 House committee voted to recommend that the Justice Department prosecute him criminally. Leading Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal reference Monday, while others pushed to offer muted defenses — or none at all.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Trump critic who suggested the former president probably benefited — at least politically — from the FBI’s summer search of his Florida home, said Trump was at least partly responsible for the deadly attack on the Capitol.
“No one is above the law,” Hogan told The Associated Press shortly before the committee vote.
The mixed reactions are a sign of how quickly the political landscape has changed for Trump as he faces a new legal threat and makes a third bid for the presidency. It is a clear change for a party defined above all by its unquestioning loyalty to Trump under all circumstances over the past six years.
The Jan. 6 House committee hearing, made up of seven Democrats and two Republican Trump critics, likely marks Congress’s latest attempt to hold the former president accountable for the attack on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of his loyalists as elected officials worked to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The criminal referral, which is not binding, is the result of a years-long investigation involving more than 1,000 witnesses, 10 televised public hearings and more than 1 million documents.
The committee, boycotted and denounced as a “mock trial” by Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, will be formally dissolved on January 3 when Republicans take control of the House.
Trump was always defiant and predicted that the criminal referral would eventually help him.
“These people don’t understand that when they come after me, people who love freedom gather around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Trump said in a statement posted to his social network, condemning the criminal reference as “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”
This week’s vote comes just a month after Trump formally launched his 2024 White House campaign. He had hoped that his status as heralded candidate might give him new leverage in his many legal entanglements while fending off potential Republican primary challengers.
Such hopes have yet to materialize. Early polls suggest the 76-year-old former president has no chance of winning the 2024 nomination, as emboldened Republican rivals prepare to line up to run against him.
Already weakened, Trump is also bracing for the possible release of his tax returns, which he has spent years trying to hide from the public. The House Ways and Means Committee was expected to consider releasing six years of Trump’s taxes on Tuesday, as well as those related to his businesses, though it wasn’t immediately clear when documents might be available to the public.
Trump’s biggest liability heading into the next presidential election, however, may have little to do with his legal challenges. Republicans are increasingly concerned about his ability to win.
GOP concerns about Trump’s eligibility intensified after the November midterm elections, when Trump’s hand-picked candidates were defeated in several high-profile contests. The setbacks followed deeper Republican losses in the two previous national elections led by Trump.
Indeed, the first weeks of Trump’s third presidential campaign are going so badly that some Trump allies are privately questioning whether he is serious about his 2024 ambitions at all.
Trump faced Republican demands to apologize for his decision last month to share a private meal with noted white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Days later, Trump called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And days after that, his hand-picked candidate in Georgia’s Senate race, former football star Herschel Walker, lost his runoff election.
Trump has not held any campaign events. Last week, after watching a “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT,” he unveiled a series of digital trading cards that depicted him as a superhero.
At the same time, Trump’s legal challenges are mounting.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, as well as key aspects of a separate investigation related to the insurgency and attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney is separately investigating efforts to overturn that state’s 2020 election results.
It is impossible to predict how long the investigations will last or if the DOJ will take the unprecedented step of indicting a former president and current candidate. But Trump is no longer protected from prosecution as he was as president.
And his party wants to support him less and less.
The Republican National Committee announced it would stop paying some of Trump’s legal bills after he launched his 2024 presidential campaign.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for “immediate and thorough explanations” after the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s estate in August. On Monday, he told reporters he had only one “immediate comment” about the criminal reference: “The whole nation knows who is responsible for that day.”
Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called for Garland’s resignation over the summer, but on Monday he kept quiet about the committee’s referral, focusing instead on alleged FBI missteps.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, himself a 2024 presidential candidate who aggressively denounced the FBI after it seized classified documents from Trump’s estate, voiced somewhat muted criticism of the Jan. 6 committee when given the chance.
“As I wrote in my book, the president’s actions and words on January 6 were reckless. But I don’t know if it’s criminal to take bad advice from lawyers,” Pence told Fox News. He added: “When it comes to the decision of the Justice Department to press charges in the future, I hope they will not press charges against the former president.”
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who is also considering a White House campaign in 2024, acknowledged Trump’s role on Jan. 6, but said the criminal reference is “not helpful” to the DOJ’s investigation.
“The record is clear that former Pres. Trump is responsible for what happened on January 6, but the responsibility will most likely come from the American people who are ready for our country to move beyond the events of January 6,” he tweeted.
So far, only a handful of members of Congress have endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid.
One of them, No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik called the Democrat-led committee “unconstitutional and illegitimate.” She said Trump was well positioned heading into the 2024 presidential race.
“As of today — he announced at this point a few weeks ago — the only candidate is Donald Trump, and he is gaining ground significantly,” Stefanik told The Associated Press on Monday. “So we’ll see what happens. But I think he’s in a very strong position.”
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York; Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland; and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, SC, contributed to this report.
