Donald Trump returns to North Carolina to speak at Fraternal Order of Police meeting

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump is returning to the battleground state of North Carolina on Friday to address a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police as he tries to portray himself as tougher on crime than his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the campaign's closing months.

Trump is scheduled to address the FOP's National Board of Trustees fall meeting in Charlotte. The FOP , the world’s largest organization of law enforcement officers, endorsed the former president on Friday, just as it did in 2016 and 2020. Between those endorsements and the latest boost from the FOP, Trump has been convicted of 34 felony counts in a business fraud case in New York and indicted in three other pending cases across various state and federal jurisdictions, including offenses related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and Trump supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The FOP's endorsement did not acknowledge the unusual scenario of one of the nation's most influential law enforcement lobbies backing the only former U.S. president in history to be convicted or charged with felony crimes.

“Public safety and border security will be important issues in the last months of this campaign,” said Patrick Yoes, the FOP national president. “Our members carefully considered the positions of the candidates on the issues and there was no doubt — zero doubt — as to who they want as our President for the next four years: Donald J. Trump.”

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York in November , after Election Day, leaving open the question of what would happen if a duly elected U.S. president also faced jail time.

Despite that legal peril, the imagery of the former president and GOP nominee in a room of law enforcement officers offers Trump the platform to contrast their support with his characterization of Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general whom Trump has called the “ringleader” of a “Marxist attack on law enforcement” across the country.

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death,” Trump said last month in Michigan , one of many generalizations about an America under Harris. “You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. ... I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”

Harris has showcased her status as a one-time top prosecutor in her home state, regularly saying “I know Donald Trump’s type” after she talks about the “perpetrators of all kinds” in her former roles.

She’s had some help with that messaging from two officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and have become surrogates for the Democratic ticket, with both stumping for her at various events across the country and reflecting on that day.

"Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told a group of voters in Arizona this summer. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

At the Democratic National Convention last month, former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell — who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries sustained that day — said Trump had “summoned our attackers...He betrayed us."

Ahead of Trump's North Carolina trip, the Harris campaign organized a press call with current and former law enforcement officials to blast Trump, including Dunn, who said Trump only supports police when they’re loyal to him.

“He put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol Police officers in danger," he said.

The Harris campaign also issued a letter signed by more than 100 law enforcement officials across the country, lauding Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as “the only candidates we trust to keep our communities safe" and arguing that Trump “will sow chaos, defund critical law enforcement agencies, and put all Americans at risk.”

Trump's support from law officers also butts up against sympathies he has shown for those who have defied the orders of police, including his pledge to pardon those charged with beating officers during the Capitol siege.

Judges and juries considering those cases have heard police officers describe being savagely attacked while defending the building. All told, about 140 officers were injured that day, making it “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement” in American history, Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has said.

Over 900 people have pleaded guilty to Jan. 6 crimes, and approximately 200 others have been convicted at trial. More than 950 people have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds getting time behind bars — terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has long expressed support for Jan. 6 defendants. During a March rally in Ohio , he stood onstage, his hand raised in salute, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles sang the national anthem .

“Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada this summer. He falsely claimed that police welcomed rioters into the Capitol by saying, “Go in, go in, go in, go in.”

“What a setup that was,” Trump said.

Trump's misrepresentation of what happened does not concern his ardent supporters gathered in Charlotte.

“I wish they could let them all out of jail,” said Janice Moody, a retired fingerprint technician with the Las Vegas Police Department and spouse of a retired Las Vegas officer.

“I don't think they did it on purpose,” she added.

The FOP joins other police groups that have already lined up behind Trump. During another Charlotte rally , Trump in July won the endorsement of the National Organization of Police Organizations, whose leadership lauded his "steadfast and very public support for our men and women on the front lines."

In February, the International Union of Police Associations endorsed Trump, calling his support for officers “unmatched.” Last month, he won the backing of the Arizona Police Association, just days after the group endorsed Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego over Trump ally Kari Lake in that state's Senate race.

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP