As more Republicans prepare to enter the 2024 fray, efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results resurface.
After months of rumours and speculation, the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is beginning to gain momentum. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is expected to declare her candidature later this week, joining former president Donald Trump as the first members of what is anticipated to grow into a sizable GOP field.
Haley, a former Trump administration ambassador to the UN, has walked a delicate line in highlighting both her ties to and her independence from the vehemently controversial former president. Her admission into the race is the first official one since Trump declared his plan to run in November, but it comes as other contenders make increasingly clear indications of their intentions.
Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is regarded as the major rival of the former president by both analysts and Trump, keeps raising his national image with a number of high-profile state initiatives that address national GOP concerns. DeSantis is reportedly close to deciding whether to run, and advisers are already in contact with potential campaign recruits.
Early polling paints an unclear picture. DeSantis would defeat Trump in a hypothetical one-on-one debate, according to a survey released last week by the Club for Growth, a conservative organisation that has distanced itself from Trump in recent months. However, the survey also revealed that Trump would win in a wider field, with potential candidates Haley and Pence helping to split the non-Trump vote.
The group is thinking about who it might support without waiting for official pronouncements. Last week, Axios reported that the Club for Growth was considering inviting DeSantis, Haley, Pence, Scott, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to a donor meeting in Florida next month.
Trump is dealing with a series of high-level investigations that might have repercussions for him and people who worked in his administration, despite opposition from some within the Republican Party. Pence was summoned last week by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigations into how Trump handled secret documents after leaving office.
as well as the election-recall attempts of Trump and his backers.
And on Monday, a judge in Georgia declared that portions of the special grand jury’s final report, which looked into Trump and his associates’ attempts to have Georgia’s election results overturned, will be made public later this week.
Judge Robert McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court stated that the remainder of the report will stay under wraps while prosecutors consider whether to press charges in the investigation.
McBurney decided that the report’s opening and conclusion, as well as a part where jurors discuss their suspicions that some of the witnesses had lied while testifying, will be made public.
The announcement follows a hearing on Jan. 24 where media outlets pressed for the report’s release but Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued against it, highlighting that charging choices in the case were “imminent” and could impede Trump’s presidential campaign.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office convened a grand jury late last month to look into Trump’s involvement in a scheme to bribe adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign in order to prevent her from publicly disclosing what she claimed was an extramarital affair she had with Trump.
