NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Former President Donald Trump faces a mountain of legal woes, but his most ardent supporters at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference say they’re all a hoax and it won’t slow down his candidacy.
Mr. Trump has routinely pushed back against the four federal indictments, and the 91 federal charges they collectively carry against him, claiming that his continued legal troubles are the result of his chief political opponent President Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice against him.
“It’s all made up,” said Robin Sonnier, a 65-year-old roofing company owner from Texas attending CPAC.
Ms. Sonnier flew with friends from Texas for the conference, where Mr. Trump is expected to speak. She and her group wore matching, canary-yellow T-shirts with the letters T-R-U-M-P stitched on the front, bedazzled in red sequins.
She said she’s been a supporter of Mr. Trump since the 1970s, long before his transition from businessman to politician, and recalled telling him in 2015 that he would win the presidency.
“They’ve been coming after him ever since he came down that escalator. It’s all made up,” she said. “That man has done nothing wrong. They have no proof of nothing. Nothing. It’s all made up.”
Mr. Trump will soon head to New York for his March 25 trial related to alleged hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are not as worried about the numerous court appearances, but instead the mounting financial costs of his legal troubles.
Reilly Grant, a 25-year-old working for a social media influencer marketing firm, worried that Mr. Trump’s legal fees would eat away at his campaign war chest.
“That’s one of my biggest fears,” Mr. Grant said.
Some Republicans fear that, as the favorite to win the GOP nomination for president, Mr. Trump will use the Republican National Committee to help pay for his mounting legal fees. He’s already been dealt a pair of defeats earlier this year in the Empire State for a defamation and civil fraud trial, and is required to pay out more than $400 million for both cases.
Those concerns were stoked when Mr. Trump nominated his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair of the organization.
Mrs. Trump defended her father-in-law during her speech on Thursday, echoing the stance that Mr. Biden is out to thwart the former president’s campaign by any means necessary.
“Joe Biden continues to weaponize his own Department of Justice against the man that’s beating him in the polls, and is his No. 1 political opponent,” Mrs. Trump said. “This is straight out of the Soviet Union, ladies and gentlemen.”
She vowed, “We will see Donald J. Trump elected as the 47th president.”
Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, told attendees, “Trump’s only crime is representing the American people first.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s federal election interference trial in Washington is expected to start in July at the earliest. That date hinges on how the Supreme Court rules in Mr. Trump’s appeal for presidential immunity in the coming months.
Erik Svane flew nearly 9 hours from Paris with his cat to attend CPAC. Mr. Svane, who is in his mid-50s, has worked on a conservative political blog in France for two decades. He believed that the Supreme Court would intervene on Mr. Trump’s behalf, and not allow “kangaroo courts” to decide who runs for office and who doesn’t.
“I see that as show trials and can’t believe this is happening in America,” Mr. Svane said. “I’m hoping it’ll wake more people up to what a rotten system we have right now.”