Nikki Haley shifts to a more critical tone on Trump over classified documents allegations

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley changed her tune on former President Donald Trump's latest legal troubles after he was slapped with a federal indictment on 37 counts related to his handling of classified documents.

"If this indictment is true, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security," Haley said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

That's a more critical tone than the former South Carolina governor took last week when news first broke of Trump's second indictment during the 2024 presidential contest.

At that time Haley, who did not mention Trump by name, said in a tweet that the decision to pursue charges represented, "prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics."

But in the wake of the 44-page indictment being unsealed, Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, is carving out space to criticize her old boss.

Haley: 'I'm a military spouse'

During the Tuesday interview, Haley mentioned that her husband, Michael Haley, serves in the U.S. armed forces and will begin a yearlong deployment in Africa this weekend.

"This puts all of our military men and women in danger, if you were going to talk about what our military is capable of or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies," she said.

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The charges against Trump, unprecedented for a former commander-in-chief, range from retaining the classified information to obstructing justice, making false statements and more. He allegedly kept documents related to nuclear weaponry, White House intelligence briefings and other military capabilities.

Trump is accused of not just storing and hiding the documents, however. The indictment also alleges he showed them to guests at his New Jersey golf club, including one which described a “plan of attack." Another had a map of a military installation.

Trump's electability questioned

Trump's rivals are all trying to figure out how best to move through a political minefield with a former president who regularly courts controversy but remains popular with the GOP base.

Just as in late March when he was hit with a New York grand jury indictment over alleged hush money payments to an adult film actress, Haley started off by slamming the prosecutors in the federal documents case.

Haley said Tuesday Trump has been hounded by Democrats since he took office and that the FBI and U.S. Justice Department have lost credibility with a large swath of the American people. But she quickly pivoted to say that two things can be true at once and noted Trump could face a third indictment connected to an election fraud case in Georgia.

"My concern is not so much about how this plays out and what we do with it, my concern is about the direction of the country," Haley said.

"The fact that we cannot have Biden win this election," she added. "...We've got to have someone that can win a general election, we've got to have someone that can right the ship on this country and get us back in shape."