WASHINGTON – Hugging Donald Trump strategy of blaming the US justice system after him historic guilty verdictRepublicans in Congress are fervently enlisting their campaign of revenge and political retribution in the Republican Party’s attempt to regain the White House.
Almost no Republican official rose to suggest that Trump should not be the party’s presidential nominee for the November election — in fact, some tried to rush his nomination. Few dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the secret money case against the former president or the 12 jurors who gave the unanimous verdict.
Indeed, any Republicans who have expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former national security adviser, John Bolton, or the top brass Senate Candidate Larry Hogan of Maryland, were instantly intimidated by the ex-president’s enforcers and told to “leave the party.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she is voting for Trump “whether he is a free man or a prisoner of the Biden regime.”
She also posted the american flag upside down which has come to symbolize the “Stop the Steal” movement that Trump started with allies before the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol.
The quick, strident and deep commitment to Trump, despite his criminal conviction shows how Republican leaders and lawmakers have been fully infused with their baseless complaints of a “rigged” system and dangerous conspiracies of a “rigged” government into their own attacks on the president Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Instead of preventing the escalation of Trump’s authoritarian language or ensuring they provide checks and balances for a second Trump term, Republican senators and representatives are upending long-held faith in U.S. governance and setting the stage for what they plan to do if Trump regains power.
On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded that prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo appear for a June hearing on the “weaponization of the federal government” and “the unprecedented political process ” from Trump — despite the fact that Biden, as president, has no authority over New York state courts.
“What we are setting ourselves up for is that if Trump wins, he will use the state apparatus to target his political opponents,” said Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale and author of “How Fascism Works.”
Stanley said history is full of examples of people who don’t believe the rhetoric of authoritarians. “Believe what they say,” he said. “He is literally saying that he will use the state apparatus to target his political opponents.”
At his Trump Tower on Friday in New York, the former president returned to the types of attacks he has repeatedly made in campaign speeches, portraying Biden as a “corrupt” nation and the US as a “fascist” nation. ”.
Trump called members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “thugs” and said Biden was a “Manchurian Candidate,” a phrase inspired by the 1960s film that portrayed a puppet of a political enemy of the USA.
A Trump campaign memo contained talking points for Republican lawmakers, suggesting they call the case a “hoax,” a “hoax,” a “witch hunt,” “election interference” and a “legal war” devised by Biden, the who called it “crooked”.
Biden does not face such charges, and the Republican Party’s efforts to impeachment of the president about his son Hunter Biden’s businesses, have largely stagnated. Hunter Biden is is expected to appear in court next week on an unrelated firearms charge in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Biden said Friday that “it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for someone to say this is rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”
Asked later at the White House if that could happen to him, Biden said: “No way. I didn’t do anything wrong. The system still works.”
As for Trump’s claims that the case is being orchestrated by the Democratic president to harm him politically, Biden joked: “I didn’t know it was that powerful.”
In the silence case, Trump was found guilty of trying to influence the 2016 election by falsifying payments to a porn star to bury the story of her affair. He stares three other criminal chargesincluding the federal case over his effort to overturn the 2020 election. But they are not likely to be heard before November’s expected election rematch with Biden.
Thursday’s verdict came after a jury in 2023 found Trump responsible for sexual abuse against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and a judge in a 2024 corporate fraud case ruled that Trump lied about his wealth for years, ordering him to pay a staggering $355 million in fines.
Almost one person, the Republicans in Congress who spoke out provided a singular voice for Trump.
Speaker Mike Johnson on “Fox & Friends” amplified the claim, without evidence, that Democrats are trying to harm Trump. Johnson, R-La., said he thinks the Supreme Court should “step in” to resolve the case.
“The judges on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they are deeply concerned about this, as are we,” Johnson said.
Outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he expected Trump to win the silence case on appeal, but the three senators seeking to replace McConnell as leader echoed Trump with stronger criticism of the judicial system.
South Dakota Senator John Thune said the case was “politically motivated.” Texas Senator John Cornyn called the verdict “a disgrace.” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said everyone who calls themselves party leaders “must stand up and condemn” what he called “illegal election interference.”
Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican known as a bipartisan leader, said the prosecutor “brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was, not because of any specific criminal conduct.”
With sentencing in the financial hush case expected in July, before the Republican National Convention, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said the GOP should speed up the convention to speed up Trump’s nomination as the party’s presidential pick.
Republican judicial defender Mike Davis, a former Senate aide mentioned for a future role in the Trump administration, distributed a letter outlining next steps.
“Dear Republicans,” he said in a Friday post. If his response to the guilty verdict was “we must respect the process” or “we have too many principles to retaliate”, he suggested they do two things: one was a dirty word, the other: “Leave the party”.
Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, distributed his own letter in which he suggested that it was the White House that “mocked” the rule of law and altered policy in “un-American” ways. He and other senators threatened to paralyze Senate business until Republicans took action.
“Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,” Lee said.
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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Ali Swenson and Chris Megerian contributed to this story.
