Nikki Haley and Tim Scott Show Openness to Criticizing Trump

Some of Donald J. Trump’s Republican rivals in the 2024 race have made a subtle shift since the details of his federal indictment were unsealed, expressing a new eagerness to emphasize the severity of the charges he faces.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was an ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, simultaneously criticized her one-time boss in a Fox News interview on Monday while saying that the Justice Department had lost credibility with the American people.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” Ms. Haley said, adding that if the indictment was accurate, “President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, another Republican seeking the presidential nomination, said on Monday it was a “serious case with serious allegations,” according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston, S.C.

Both Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott had initially reacted to news of the indictment by focusing almost exclusively on criticizing the special counsel and the Justice Department for bringing the charges.

“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter on Friday. Mr. Scott had said on Fox News, “Today what we see is a justice system where the scales are weighted.”

The statements represented merely an inching away from the former president rather than a full-throated departure from a broader set of the Republican Party, whose leadership has for the most part publicly stood behind Mr. Trump. In an illustration of that delicate balancing act, Ms. Haley said on Tuesday on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” that the charges against Mr. Trump, while serious, did not warrant his imprisonment when asked if she would pardon him.

“I think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because of a documents case,” she said, adding, “So I would be inclined in favor of a pardon, but I think it’s really premature at this point when he’s not even been convicted of anything.”

The small faction of the party that had already broken from Mr. Trump has sharpened its criticism of him in recent days, calling the facts of the indictment “very, very damning,” in the words of William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under Mr. Trump.

The unsealed indictment detailed the moving of boxes that contained classified documents, including into a bathroom, and described a taped private conversation from a meeting that Mr. Trump had.

Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard law professor and a strident defender of Mr. Trump, acknowledged in a Fox News appearance on Sunday that the Justice Department had obtained a “damning piece of evidence” when Mr. Trump told several people in the taped conservation that he was still in possession of a classified document after leaving office.

Mr. Dershowitz said that the federal indictment of Mr. Trump was a stronger case than the Manhattan hush-money indictment pending against him, but continued to assert that Mr. Trump was being singled out by the special counsel bringing the federal charges, Jack Smith.

“Can you prosecute somebody when you targeted that person and went through every hoop, dotted every i, crossed every t, gave lawyers immunity, violated the lawyer-client privilege in many respects and then came up with something?” he said.

Other Republicans running for president have been put in the difficult position of supporting Mr. Trump or focusing squarely on the Justice Department to avoid directly criticizing him and turning the pro-Trump G.O.P. base against them.

Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, said on Friday that his “only hope” was that the facts of the case “would meet a high standard necessary to justify the unprecedented federal indictment of a former president.” He has not spoken about the case since the facts came out.

Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who has staked his claim as an anti-Trump candidate, called the details of the indictment “indefensible” at a CNN town hall on Monday evening.

“Everybody, whether you like Donald Trump or you don’t like Donald Trump, this conduct is inexcusable, in my opinion, for somebody who wants to be president of the United States,” he said, accusing rivals who were dodging the specifics of “playing games.”

Paul Ryan, the former House speaker who opposes Mr. Trump, said on CBS Mornings that “there’s a timing to” criticizing Mr. Trump. During his speakership, Mr. Ryan often held his tongue over disagreements with Mr. Trump, who then and now was his party’s most popular figure.

“I don’t think you can get this nomination without going through Donald Trump,” he said. “I don’t think you can get it going around him. You have to go through him to get the nomination.”

While Mr. Christie is the first to take such a direct approach, Mr. Ryan predicted he would not be the last.

“I think the others,” he said, “will start making that kind of push.”