Former President Donald Trump’s growing rap sheet is dragging the 2024 GOP presidential race into undiscovered territory and upending the conventional wisdom that assumes that candidates crumble under the weight of criminal charges.

Mr. Trump is defiantly basking in the post-arraignment spotlight and gaining support from GOP voters who think he is the victim of a corrupt, out-of-control Deep State.

The charges “will guarantee he wins the nomination,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times on Wednesday, as the reality sunk in from Mr. Trump’s surrender to U.S. Marshalls in Miami a day earlier.

“The fact is you don’t get indicted in New York, Atlanta, Miami and Washington D.C. unless it is a deliberate effort to destroy you politically,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Trump’s primary rivals hope the legal woes will drag him down over time, but their responses to the new indictment have been scattershot. Some GOP hopefuls rallied behind him. Others rose against him. Some tried to strike a balance to question Mr. Trump’s conduct without angering his loyal supporters or other voters who think he is getting a raw deal.

Mr. Gingrich, whose wife Callista served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See in the Trump administration, said voters have come to see the Department of Justice and FBI as crooked. He said voters are being forced to decide whether they stand with “the guy they are accusing of wrongdoing or the people doing the accusing.”

“The accusers are seen by more and more Americans as guilty,” he said.

Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami federal courthouse this week to 37 federal felony charges of willfully retaining highly classified documents, obstructing justice and making false statements to federal agents.

The arraignment played out a couple of months after Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to a porn actress during the tail-end of the 2016 campaign.

A jury in Manhattan also found him legally liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, and he still faces possible charges related to his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

The legal baggage has threatened to distract Mr. Trump from the nomination battle, but he has not been sidelined so far. Instead, he has been the center of attention, sucking all the oxygen out of the room in the early stages of the nomination battle and making it hard for his rivals to gain traction.

Mr. Trump holds a 61% to 23% lead over his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the Republican contest, according to a CBS poll released Wednesday that showed Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley mired in single digits.

The survey showed 61% of likely GOP primary voters said the indictment charges against Mr. Trump “won’t change” their views of him, 14% said they have a more positive view of him, and 7% said they have soured on him.

Seventy-six percent of likely Republican voters also said they are more concerned the indictment is politically motivated, compared to 12 % who are more concerned about the national security risks.

Looking to loosen Mr. Trump’s grip on the primary electorate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have said the federal charges are another reason Mr. Trump is unfit to be the party’s standard bearer in 2024.

On the flip side, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has pledged to pardon Mr. Trump if he is convicted. Mr. Ramaswamy is demanding the rest of the GOP field follow in his footsteps.

The rest of the pack is hedging their bets, saying Mr. Trump’s alleged conduct, if true, is troubling, and raising concerns about a two-tier justice system.

“This indictment contains serious charges. I cannot defend what is alleged,” Mr. Pence said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Creating an opportunity where highly classified material could have fallen into the wrong hands, even inadvertently, that jeopardizes our national security, it puts at risk the men and women of our armed forces.”

Ms. Haley initially criticized the indictment before changing her tune.

“If this indeed is true … President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security,” she said, adding that it puts military men and women in danger, including her husband, South Carolina Army National Guard Maj. Michael Haley.

Mr. Scott said this is a “serious case with serious allegations.”

Mr. Trump’s arraignment in Miami garnered wall-to-wall coverage from cable news networks and drew swarms of demonstrators outside the federal courthouse.

Mr. Trump’s campaign aides documented the day on social media and slipped in a stop at a Cuban restaurant before flying back to New Jersey for a fundraiser with donors and bundlers to his campaign.

“Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country,” Mr. Trump said. “This day will go down in infamy.”

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.