Nikki Haley and Tim Scott change their tone and show a new openness to criticizing Trump.

While most of former President Donald J. Trump’s Republican rivals have closed ranks around him since his indictment in the classified documents case, two of them — Nikki Haley and Tim Scott — have begun to move away from exclusively suing the Ministry of Justice.

In a Fox News interview on Monday, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, continued to argue that the Justice Department and FBI had lost credibility with the American people, but she also acknowledged the seriousness of the charges against Mr. Trump.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” Ms. Haley said, adding that if the charges were correct, “President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.”

Ms. Haley’s first statement on Friday, a day after Mr. Trump’s federal indictment, was a staunch defense of her former boss.

“This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” she said at the time Twitter. “The American people are exhausted by the overreach of the prosecution, double standards and vendetta politics.”

Mr. Scott, a senator who is also from South Carolina and, like Ms. Haley, is significantly behind Mr. Trump in the Republican polls, similarly changed his tone.

During a campaign appearance Monday in Spartanburg, SC, Mr. Scott acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations against Mr. Trump, while accusing the Justice Department and President Biden of persecuting Republicans.

He described it as a “serious case with serious allegations,” according to The Post and Courier newspaper from Charleston, SC

But in Mr. Scott’s initial response on Thursday, op Fox newshe focused solely on the claim that the Justice Department had become a weapon against Republicans.

“What we see today is a justice system where the scales are weighed,” Mr Scott said at the time.

Their positions are still a long way from that of another 2024 contender, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has sought to position himself as the candidate most willing to attack Mr. Trump.

Mr. Christie bumped into Mr. Trump again at a CNN event at City Hall on Monday night, calling him “angry” and “vengeful” and saying he believed the indictment was “a very tight, very detailed, evidence-laden indictment, and the behavior there is horrible.