Former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, in her first public comments since announcing the end of her 2024 Republican White House campaign, said she will vote for former President Trump in his 2024 rematch with President Biden.

Haley, who was Trump’s last rival in the GOP primaries before suspending her campaign more than two months ago, and who has not endorsed the former president, was asked during a question-and-answer session following her address Tuesday at a conservative think tank in the nation’s capital whether Biden or Trump was stronger on national security issues.

‘Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I have made that clear many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So, I will be voting for Trump,’ Haley said.

But Haley, who continues to grab up to 20% of the vote in Republican presidential primaries two months after ending her bid, said ‘Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me.’

Haley launched her presidential campaign in February last year, becoming the first major candidate to challenge Trump, who had announced his candidacy three months earlier. She was the final rival to Trump, battling the former president in a contentious two-candidate showdown from the New Hampshire primary in late January through Super Tuesday in early March.

Haley announced that she was suspending her White House campaign on March 6, the day after Trump swept 14 of 15 GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.

However, Haley made it clear when she left the Republican presidential nomination race that she intended to keep speaking out.

And to date, Haley has declined to endorse Trump.

‘It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that,’ Haley said as she got out of the race two months ago.

The Biden campaign, reacting to Haley’s comments regarding Trump, continued to make a pitch for Haley supporters.

‘Nothing has changed for the millions of Republican voters who continue to cast their ballots against Donald Trump in the primaries and care deeply about the future of our democracy, standing strong with our allies against foreign adversaries, and working across the aisle to get things done for the American people – while also rejecting the chaos, division and violence that Donald Trump embodies,’ Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. ‘Only one candidate shares those values, and only one campaign is working hard every day to earn their support – and that’s President Biden’s.’

During her speech on Wednesday, Haley targeted Biden and Republicans in Congress, but she didn’t mention Trump by name.

Instead, Haley said that ‘a growing number of Democrats and Republicans have forgotten what makes America safe.’

Haley made her comments as she gave her first address at the Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank known for focusing on international affairs and national security.

Haley – who during her White House run advocated a muscular U.S. foreign policy to deal with global hot spots such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and the fighting between Israel and Hamas, which was often in stark contrast with Trump’s America First agenda of keeping the nation out of international entanglements – joined the institute a month ago as a senior adviser.

‘A loud part of each party wants us to abandon our allies, appease our enemies and focus only on the problems we have at home. They believe that if we leave the world alone, the world will leave us alone. They even say ignoring global chaos will somehow make our country more secure,’ Haley said.

And she warned that ‘this worldview has already put America in great danger, and the threat is mounting by the day. I have always spoken hard truths. If we don’t remember the path to peace, war will come to America, and it will claim countless lives. We have to prevent war. We have to keep Americans safe.’

Haley trained most of her verbal firepower on the Democrat incumbent in the White House.

Pointing to the Biden administration’s recent temporary pause of a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel over concerns that the weapons would be used in attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where the death toll has reportedly topped 35,000, per the Hamas-run Health Ministry, Haley said, ‘I can hardly imagine a more foolish move than Joe Biden withholding weapons from one of our closest allies. And it comes after more and more Democrats have turned on Israel.’

And she said ‘Joe Biden’s legacy is already clear. He will go down in history as the commander in chief who refused to stop our enemies.’

But Haley also fired away at her own party, saying that ‘just a few weeks before Biden threw Israel to the wolves, many Republicans in Congress tried to push Ukraine off a cliff. All told, 112 House Republicans voted against military aid to Ukraine.’

She said ‘some Republicans lack … clarity when it comes to Ukraine. Russia’s dictator has made it perfectly clear that he won’t stop at Kyiv. He wants to recreate the Soviet Union, and he’s threatened to attack our NATO allies. We are obligated to defend them, and if Russia attacks, American troops will go to war. We must do everything possible to ensure that doesn’t happen.’

During a question-and-answer session after her speech, Haley said she will travel to Israel in the coming weeks.

Haley also said that after ending her campaign, ‘the first thing I did was catch up on my sleep. I quickly got back to running, which I missed during the campaign.’ 

And she added that she’s spent more time with her parents, her children and her husband, who recently returned from a long military deployment overseas.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) drew anger over its consideration to issue arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas officials, prompting critics to highlight cases of rogue nations where leaders appear to escape the court’s scrutiny.

‘While the ICC has been around for over two decades, it has less than 10 successful prosecutions,’ Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, told Fox News Digital.  

‘It’s spent over $2 billion. It’s been really ineffective, and that makes it particularly ironic that it’s going after the officials of Israel. Israel isn’t an ICC member state, and the ICC is prohibited by its charter for going after a state which effectively polices its own alleged violations,’ Kittrie said. ‘Israel polices its own alleged violations, so the ICC really has no business going after Israeli officials.’ 

‘It’s obviously, totally politically driven,’ he added. ‘The failings are clearly driven by politics and the same anti-Israel animus that has long dominated the U.N. and other international organizations whose filings should be treated as what they are: It’s quintessential lawfare, a political vendetta masquerading as a legal proceeding.’

‘There’s no way that they should have filed against Israel,’ Kittrie argued. ‘The ICC prosecutor decided to do it for political reasons … there’s more pressure on him to file against Israel than there is against far more worthy candidates, so that’s what he does. It’s basically law by windsock.’

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced this week that he would file an application requesting arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas’ terrorist leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and military commander Mohammed Deif. 

Khan said the decision proceeded from a review of evidence by a panel of experts, including human rights attorney Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney. Khan said his office found ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe Israeli officials ‘bear criminal responsibility for … war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine.’

Khan cited alleged crimes of ‘starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’ and ‘directing attacks against a civilian population.’

Critics have blasted Khan for what they view as equating the Israeli officials with Hamas by requesting warrants for both groups of leaders. Khan’s office ‘unanimously concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders … have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence,’ according to Clooney’s statement.

As such, many have pointed to some glaring examples of missing cases that they believe the ICC should pursue, such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and any official from the Iranian regime.

Gabriel Noronha, former State Department adviser on Iran and current Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA fellow), on social media platform X also highlighted Chinese President Xi Jinping for his country’s alleged treatment of the Uyghur population and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who the U.N. accused of committing ‘crimes against humanity.’

The court, meanwhile, has ongoing investigations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya, Mali, Afghanistan, the Philippines and Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, with cases recently closed and under consideration in Uganda, Central African Republic, Kenya and Georgia. An investigation has remained open in Venezuela since 2021 following a three-year preliminary exam.

The ICC has previously drawn a clear line on who it can and cannot pursue in cases, depending on membership as determined by signatories of the Rome Statute. The court considered two different cases brought against North Korea – one in 2014 and one in 2016 – and determined that in the first case the court had jurisdiction because South Korea was a signatory, but in the latter case, North Korea alone lay outside jurisdiction as non-signatory, the Korea Herald reported.

The court has, however, acted outside this measure before, most notably when Russia invaded Ukraine and the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin related to alleged involvement in the abduction of Ukrainian children.

Both Ukraine and Russia signed the Rome Statute, but neither ratified it, and Russia withdrew its signature outright in 2016. Ukraine accepted the court’s jurisdiction, though, which allowed the ICC to investigate alleged Russian crimes following the 2022 invasion.

Israel is not a signatory, but the Palestinian Territories, titled the State of Palestine by the ICC, is a signatory and ratified the Rome Statute, which would provide the ICC with its jurisdiction to investigate alleged crimes in the Gaza Strip. The announcement regarding the application for arrest warrants this week also referred to ‘the Territory of Israel,’ even though the United Nations (not affiliated with the ICC) does not recognize a Palestinian state and recognizes the state of Israel. The United Nations affords the Palestinian Territories nonmember observer status, but the territories signed onto the Rome Statute in 2015.

Fox News Digital reached out to the ICC prosecutor’s office but did not receive a response by time of publication.

China, Syria and Iran are not signatories to the Rome Statute, but Venezuela is. The court sidestepped the 2016 North Korea case because the issue appeared internal, and the China, Syria and Iran cases have largely consisted of internal issues that would provide the ICC with little territorial justification.

Kittrie said the issuing of arrest warrants from the ICC ultimately doesn’t hold much weight, pointing to the fact that the warrant did not dissuade Putin from continuing his war into a third year and that he remains at-large.

‘It hasn’t made a difference, it won’t make a difference,’ Kittrie said, noting that it did give the prosecutor ‘some sense that he was getting legitimacy from the United States,’ which also is not a signatory of the Rome Statute.

‘I think one of the first things the U.S. is going to do is cut off its assistance to the ICC. No, it doesn’t provide funding to the ICC … but it does provide various types of intelligence and other practical assistance, which are crucial to the ICC ability to have great success.’

With the end of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in sight, a pending verdict in the historic case could have serious consequences in the 2024 election rematch between the former president and President Biden.

Trump holds the slight edge right now both in national polling and in public opinion surveys in most of the crucial battleground states that will likely decide the election.

But Trump could potentially be convicted on some or all of the nearly three-dozen state felony charges he faces in his trial in New York City, which is the first in the nation’s history for a former or current president.

Veteran Democratic pollster Chris Anderson told Fox News that he didn’t think ‘a guilty verdict would fundamentally change the landscape of the race.’ Longtime Republican pollster Neil Newhouse went even further, arguing that a Trump conviction ‘is unlikely to make any difference.’

Both pointed to the fact that ‘attitudes are so set in concrete’ regarding both the former Republican president and his Democratic successor in the White House.

Trump is charged with falsifying business records in relation to payments during the 2016 election that he made to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about his alleged affair with the adult film actress. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 in return for her silence about allegations of an affair with Trump in 2006.

Both Cohen and Daniels testified for the prosecution and were grilled by Trump’s attorneys during cross-examination in a case that’s grabbed tons of attention on the cable news networks, online and on social media.

The former president has repeatedly denied falsifying business records as well as the alleged sexual encounter with Daniels, and has repeatedly claimed, without providing evidence, that the case is a ‘SHAM TRIAL instigated and prosecuted directly from the inner halls of the White House and DOJ.’

Trump has also been fined a couple of times by the judge in the case – and threatened with jail – for violating a gag order aimed at protecting witnesses and jurors from the former president’s verbal attacks.

According to a Fox News national poll conducted earlier this month, nearly half of registered voters questioned said Trump had done something illegal when it comes to violations of campaign finance laws, with another quarter saying he had done something unethical. 

Only 27% said the former president had done nothing seriously wrong. But that number jumped to 54% among Trump supporters.

That same survey indicated that voters were roughly divided on whether Trump’s legal treatment was fair (51%) or unfair (47%). There was an expected extremely wide partisan divide, with nine out of 10 Democrats saying the former president’s treatment was fair and 85% of Republicans disagreeing.

Would a Trump guilty verdict dramatically alter the current state of play in the presidential showdown?

Two recent national polls suggest the answer is not really.

Sixty-two percent of registered voters questioned in a Quinnipiac University survey said a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote for president. Fifteen percent said it would make them more likely to cast a ballot for Trump and 21% said it would make them less likely to vote for the former president.

Meanwhile, eight out of 10 Trump supporters surveyed in an ABC News/Ipsos national poll said they’d still back the presumptive GOP presidential nominee if he was found guilty in court. Sixteen percent said they would reconsider their support, and 4% said they would no longer back Trump.

Anderson, a member of the Fox News Election Decision Team and the Democratic partner on the Fox News Poll, compared a potential guilty verdict to the infamous video that briefly damaged Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 presidential election. 

‘We might see an ‘Access Hollywood’ type slump in Trump’s poll numbers, where some of his less devoted supporters sour on him temporarily, but then by November it will seem forgivable,’ Anderson said. ‘ So I don’t think a guilty verdict would fundamentally change the landscape of the race, but it will certainly be a new contour that could be meaningful in a close race.’

Newhouse, who served as a pollster on four Republican presidential campaigns and is a co-founder of the political survey and polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, highlighted that ‘attitudes are so set in concrete regarding both President Biden and former President Trump that a guilty verdict in the hush money is unlikely to make any difference at all on the presidential ballot.’ 

‘Those who back Trump believe this is nothing more than a political witch hunt, while those who oppose him came to a guilty verdict before the trial ever began,’ he emphasized.

But Anderson spotlighted that the history-making trial would have an impact.

‘Regardless of the verdict, this trial clearly isn’t what Trump wants to be dealing with right now and has not helped him,’ Anderson said. ‘What might help him is a not guilty verdict that will allow him to claim vindication. But even then, it’s a real stretch to imagine it becomes a net positive for him.’