WASHINGTON – Former United States president Donald Trump said on Friday he would not end his run for the White House if convicted and sentenced in any of the criminal investigations threatening to derail his tumultuous comeback bid.

The Republican front runner was discussing the multiple indictments he faces as he pushes for a second term, a day after prosecutors broadened the charges against him over his handling of classified government documents.

Asked by radio host John Fredericks if being sentenced would stop his campaign, Trump quickly responded: “Not at all. There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could.”

“And even the radical left crazies are saying not at all, that wouldn’t stop (me) – and it wouldn’t stop me, either,” the 77-year-old added.

“These people are sick. What they are doing is absolutely horrible.”

The twice-impeached former president was first indicted in the classified documents case in June, accused of endangering national security by holding onto top secret nuclear and defence information after leaving the White House.

The Justice Department added charges on Thursday to its more than three dozen counts against Trump, who was found by a jury in a civil trial in May to have raped a writer in Manhattan in the 1990s.

Mounting prosecutions

Trump is also facing dozens of felony charges in a case involving hush money payments to a porn star in New York and is bracing for indictment in separate state and federal investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In a major development on Thursday in the documents probe, Special Counsel Jack Smith alleged that Trump, who is scheduled to go on trial at the height of the campaign in March and May 2024, asked a worker at his beachfront estate in Florida to delete surveillance footage to obstruct investigators.

Trump, who denies all wrongdoing, was also charged with illegally retaining national defence information over a document he is accused of showing to journalists at his New Jersey golf club.

He unleashed a torrent of invective loaded with false accusations against the government, President Joe Biden and other top Democrats on his social media platform.

He also called for Mr Smith “and his Thug Prosecutors” to be jailed alongside Attorney-General Merrick Garland.

Trump’s remarks came as he and rival Ron DeSantis prepared to appear on the same platform for the first in the campaign alongside almost the entire Republican presidential field at the Iowa party’s annual Lincoln Dinner.

The fund raiser in Des Moines later on Friday – seen as a landmark in the early presidential cycle – comes with Mr DeSantis facing his own challenges.

The 44-year-old has seen Trump’s lead widen from 13 points in February to 34 points now, as he has failed to connect with voters and has been beset by a series of largely self-inflicted controversies.

Nazi imagery

The DeSantis campaign was forced this week to fire a staff member who promoted a video featuring Nazi imagery, and the candidate sparked outrage by suggesting he would pick anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr to lead his public health policy.

Aides also announced they were firing a third of the campaign’s staff as they acknowledged wild overspending, and the Florida governor earned further opprobrium as he defended his state’s heavily criticised new curriculum teaching the benefits of slavery.

With Iowa and then New Hampshire voters due to pick their favoured Republican nominee in six months, most of the candidates have been camped out in those states, attending campaign events daily.

Other speakers at the Lincoln Dinner include Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, who is running a lowly fourth in the primary behind businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott will also take the stage.

“Tonight, we’re going to see desperate candidates peddle divisive rhetoric and extreme policies to pull Americans apart and win over the fringes of their Maga base,” Iowa Democratic Party chair Rita Hart told a news conference.

Maga – short for Make America Great Again – is a political slogan popularised by former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before being appropriated by Trump in 2016.

Democrats now use it pejoratively to refer to far-right Republicans. AFP