'This is catastrophic': Ex-GOP lawmaker warns Republicans of Trump's 'toxic' brand

Former President Donald Trump's Espionage Act indictment is doing more than putting him in legal peril ahead of his 2024 run — it's also making the Republican brand toxic in one of America's largest and most important swing states, said former Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) in an interview with City & State Pennsylvania published this week.

"We’ve largely seen Pennsylvania Republicans keep their distance from Donald Trump amid the new wave of indictments," said interviewer Harrison Cann. "What would an affiliation with Trump mean for a potential Republican candidate in the commonwealth?"

"In Pennsylvania, especially if you’re running statewide or as a Republican in a competitive district, you must absolutely keep your distance from Trump," said Dent. "Trump’s brand is toxic among the broader general electorate. The fact that he’s been indicted twice now – and one of those indictments is far more serious than the other with the documents indictments – is breathtaking. It speaks to national security, lack of respect for law enforcement, recklessness, carelessness and dangerousness. If you’re running statewide in Pennsylvania, it may not matter how good of a candidate you are if you have an anchor at the top of the ticket."

Some Republicans have claimed that the indictment could actually help Trump by causing right-leaning voters to rally against a perceived "Deep State" political attack, but Dent, a moderate conservative who broke with his party to endorse Joe Biden in 2020, squashed that idea quickly.

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"Maybe he gets a little bit of a bump with the most ardent elements of the base," he said. "But with key demographics like swing voters and independents, this is catastrophic for the GOP."

The indictment, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, alleges Trump not only improperly hoarded boxes of national defense secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, but ordered his body man Walt Nauta to move them around between multiple unsecured rooms so federal investigators and even his own attorneys wouldn't know he had them.