(NewsNation) — The FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida Monday, escalating the probe for missing classified documents. But will this action impact the political landscape going forward, especially ahead of the 2022 midterm election this fall?
NewsNation political editor Chris Stirewalt joined “Morning in America” to discuss how the search could impact the upcoming election, and whether it will deter voters from voting for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“We don’t know what the target of the investigation was yet,” Stirewalt explained. “Certainly we don’t ever have a moment like this in American history, where you have a former president, whose home is the subject of a search warrant. On the other hand, we have never had a former president who tried to steal a second term. And we’ve never had a former president defy the law. As it relates to the disclosure of the documents from his presidency like this one.”
Stirewalt said that Trump still has a substantial following inside the Republican party, but will have to deal with challenges regardless. He compares Trump’s possible challenges to Hillary Clinton’s campaign: Clinton paid a serious price for her mishandling of state secrets, and voters had pre-existing judgments toward her.
“And that was because voters already had perceptions of corruption around the Clinton family, their finances, all of that stuff,” Stirewalt said. Trump used that against Clinton, using it as ammunition against her. Now, Trump will also experience all the disadvantages of an incumbent, Stirewalt explained.
“Trump has been playing a weird game,” Stirewalt said, “where he is skirting a Federal Election Commission rules that govern candidacy. He is acting like a candidate in the sense that he is holding campaign events, he is running ads, he is a de facto candidate, but he hasn’t filed his candidacy papers yet with the Federal Election Commission that allows him to access more than $100 million worth of funds that he raised mostly in the wake of the 2020 election.”
Stirewalt explains that this works to Trump’s disadvantage, but also sends a message to the Justice Department that it needs to do something now, if it is going to at all.
You can watch Stirewalt’s full analysis in the player above.
