'I'm Being Indicted for You,' Trump Tells Christian Group

Donald Trump, who faces federal trials in New York and Florida, told a conference of evangelical activists that he wears the indictments as a "great badge of courage." The former president portrayed his legal battle as a shared struggle with Christian activists at the event on Saturday night, the New York Times reports, saying, "Together, we're warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists and the Marxists." Trump told the crowd, "I'm being indicted for you, and I believe the 'you' is more than 200 million people that love our country"—a claim that one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nominated called "absurd" on Sunday.

Most of the GOP field spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition event in Washington over its three days, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, often about abortion. In his address, Pence challenged all GOP presidential candidates to promise to support a national ban on abortions being performed at 15 weeks and later. That's more restrictive than anything Trump has backed. Although he's talked abortion restrictions as a state issue before, Trump seemed to shift Saturday, per USA Today. "There of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life," he said. Attendees cheered when the former president reminded them that he appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade a year ago.

Another GOP candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, criticized Trump on Sunday for having "the audacity to say that he got indicted for us." Christie made the comments on ABC News' This Week, per the Hill. "I don't know how it benefited the American people for him to take highly sensitive intelligence and secret documents out of the White House, to stonewall the government on returning them for over a year and a half, to subject himself to a raid by the FBI, even though they asked him voluntarily to return this stuff, and to then be subject to an indictment, which is obviously going to be one of great trouble for the country because no one wants to see this happen," Christie said. (More Donald Trump 2024 stories.)