Many prominent Republicans have been quick to echo former president Donald Trump in criticizing the prosecution, the venue and his conviction on 34 counts related to falsifying business records, with only a few coming out in defense of the legal process.<\/p>\n
Rather than expressing confidence in the judicial system, Republicans ranging from longtime Trump allies to those who backed his impeachment have expressed dismay over what they have characterized as a political weaponization of the judicial process.<\/p>\n
Some repeated Trump\u2019s argument that the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, was not impartial. Several asserted, without evidence, that the case brought in New York was an example of the Biden administration\u2019s weaponization of the judicial system. Others blamed the jury by saying they did not have confidence in the 12 Americans chosen to hand down a verdict in the case.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News on Sunday that the Republican Party would \u201cfight back \u2026 with everything in our arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He referenced how the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), had issued requests for Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan, and for the lead prosecutor to appear for a hearing on June 13 by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.<\/p>\n
While the Manhattan district attorney serves in an elected local position, Johnson still tied the verdict to the Biden administration, suggesting without evidence that it was the result of a push by President Biden and federal Democrats to prosecute Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what we\u2019ll do with our tools that we have in Congress, in the House, is we\u2019ll use our oversight responsibility,\u201d Johnson said. The hearing will \u201cinvestigate what these prosecutors are doing at the state and federal level to go out to use \u2026 political retribution in the court system to go after political opponents of federal officials like Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has for years had an acrimonious relationship with the former president but nonetheless endorsed him in March, also criticized the trial process. \u201cThese charges never should have been brought in the first place,\u201d McConnell said on X on Thursday. \u201cI expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president\u2019s daughter-in-law, lashed out against Merchan during a Sunday morning interview with CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union,\u201d saying that Merchan \u201cshould have never been presiding over the case\u201d and that the entire trial was a \u201cwaste of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the United States of America,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is the kind of thing you would expect to see in the communist U.S.S.R.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert, called the attacks on the courts, combined with the larger broadside against elections, \u201calarming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all symptoms of an increasingly deep disease, a disease of social and political order, and they can easily pave the path to a dictatorship,\u201d Tribe said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Even several moderate Republicans were coming to the former president\u2019s defense, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted to convict Trump on an impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection in 2021 and has pledged not to support his reelection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is fundamental to our American system of justice that the government prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct regardless of who the defendant happens to be. In this case the opposite has happened,\u201d Collins said in a statement. The senator specifically attacked Bragg, the district attorney, who she suggested \u201cbrought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, similarly criticized the district attorney.<\/p>\n
\u201cBragg should have settled the case against Trump. \u2026 But he made a political decision,\u201d Romney told Atlantic staff writer and Romney biographer McKay Coppins. \u201cBragg may have won the battle, for now, but he may have lost the political war. Democrats think they can put out the Trump fire with oxygen. It\u2019s political malpractice.\u201d (There were no publicly known plea discussions before trial. However, Bragg could not have unilaterally settled the case; Trump would have to have agreed to any plea deal.)<\/p>\n
Gregg Nunziata, who leads the Society for the Rule of Law, said it\u2019s fair to question whether this case was a good exercise of prosecutorial discretion.<\/p>\n
Collins\u2019s remarks, he added, were \u201ccriticizing aspects of this particular prosecution, not trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the justice system as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel warned of the consequences of attacking an independent branch of government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look around the world and you look at democratic countries or formerly democratic countries that became authoritarian, one of the things that happened in each of those cases was a concerted attack on the independent judiciary,\u201d Fogel said.<\/p>\n
Many of Trump\u2019s longtime allies were critical of the trial\u2019s results and argued that the convictions will play to his advantage.<\/p>\n
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) likened the case to \u201cfascism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that what happened in New York is disgraceful,\u201d Vance told CNN\u2019s Wolf Blitzer on Friday. \u201cThrowing your political opponents in jail \u2014 thank God it only happened in New York and not the rest of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate seen as a possible Trump vice-presidential contender, told Fox News on Sunday that the conviction will persuade Republican voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that this verdict has actually brought \u2014 unifying our party,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout any question what we\u2019re seeing is Never Trumpers calling me and say, \u2018Tim, I\u2019m on the bandwagon now. I\u2019ve seen this two-tiered justice system working against the president United States, it can work against me too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), another Trump vice-presidential prospect, was asked by CNN\u2019s Laura Coates if he respected the jury\u2019s verdict.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d he responded. While he told CNN that he believes it\u2019s \u201cpartly the jury\u2019s fault,\u201d he has largely blamed Bragg and Merchan.<\/p>\n
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, wrote on X after the verdict that the New York trial was a \u201csham\u201d and \u201can absolute travesty of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was ALL politics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There were a few Republicans who went against the party line \u2014 and were met with swift pushback from Trump\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a frequent Trump critic who also voted in 2021 to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, said Friday that the guilty verdict in his hush money criminal trial \u2014 and his other legal problems \u2014 have made him a flawed challenger against Biden.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese distractions have given the Biden campaign a pass as the focus has shifted from Biden\u2019s indefensible record and the damage his policies have done to Alaska and our nation\u2019s economy, to Trump\u2019s legal drama,\u201d Murkowski said on X.<\/p>\n
Murkowski did not offer any commentary on the verdict other than to say that it is the \u201cfirst step in the legal process\u201d and that she expects Trump to appeal it.<\/p>\n
And when former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, now the Republican candidate for Maryland\u2019s Senate seat, urged \u201call Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process,\u201d top Trump adviser Chris LaCivita had a had a blunt response on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just ended your campaign,\u201d he told the former governor.<\/p>\n
Marianna Sotomayor and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
A previous version of this article misstated the title of Lara Trump. She is co-chair of the Republican National Committee, not co-chair of the Republican Party. The article has been corrected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Many prominent Republicans have been quick to echo former president Donald Trump in criticizing the prosecution, the venue and his conviction on 34 counts related to falsifying business records, with only a few coming out in defense of the legal process. Rather than expressing confidence in the judicial system, Republicans ranging from longtime Trump allies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}