For the second time this year, Democrats find themselves in a complicated position: torn between celebrating a long-sought indictment of Donald J. Trump and proceeding with caution.
The party is in near-universal agreement that Mr. Trump should face federal charges for retaining classified documents and resisting investigators’ efforts to recover them. Many Democrats view the case as more consequential than the indictment New York prosecutors brought against Mr. Trump in March, which relates to a hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 campaign.
And they see the documents case as a degree of comeuppance for a twice-impeached former president who has repeatedly escaped repercussions for telling lies, flouting legal and ethical norms and trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Still, there are concerns in the party that the indictment of a man who holds tremendous sway as a former president and remains the Republican front-runner for the 2024 election could lead to violence and harm the country’s global standing.
“I don’t want to see this chaos machine do any more damage to the country, to hurt any more people,” said Representative Greg Landsman, a freshman Democrat from Ohio, referring to the former president. “And so I do think Democrats, Republicans, independents, everyone has to sort of take a disposition of seriousness.”
Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group, was skeptical of prosecuting Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot. When Mr. Trump was indicted in March, Mr. Bennett questioned whether the offenses the former president had been accused of were worth the political risk of an indictment.
This time, Mr. Bennett said, he has no doubts about the indictment’s necessity.
“There is simply no way you could read that indictment and think he should escape judgment for such egregious behavior,” Mr. Bennett said. “I have not heard from a single person in my world in Democratic politics and Never-Trump land — no one thinks that this shouldn’t have been brought.”
Yet while many Democrats say the indictment is necessary to demonstrate that no one, including a former president, is above the law, political risk remains on the mind of some. Already, many leading Republicans have rallied around Mr. Trump; some have gone so far as to suggest outright war.
“Trump supporters will stand by him no matter what he does, and they are so radical that they might react with violence,” said Patricia Todd, vice chair of the Alabama Democratic Party.
Democrats also hold conflicting views on how the indictment will affect the United States’ global standing. Laleh Ispahani, the incoming director of the Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic group founded by the liberal billionaire George Soros, said she believed the indictment would “set an example for the world.” Indicting such a powerful figure, in her view, shows others that “nobody is above the law.”
Maria Cardona, a Democratic political strategist, said that while the indictment was justified, any jubilation was ill advised. She called the entire matter “absolutely horrific, traumatic and unbelievably bad for the country.”
“No one should be celebrating that this happened,” Ms. Cardona said. “We have become a laughingstock internationally.”
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
