Republicans join Trump’s attacks on justice system and campaign of vengeance after guilty verdict
WASHINGTON — Embracing Donald Trump strategy to blame the American justice system after his historic guilty verdictRepublicans in Congress are fervently engaging in his campaign of revenge and political retaliation in the Republican Party’s attempt to regain the White House.
Almost No Republican official has spoken out to suggest that Trump should not be the party’s presidential nominee for the November election — some have even tried to expedite his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York court that heard the case the hush money case against the former president, or against the twelve jurors who unanimously delivered their verdict.
In fact, any Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top officials Senate candidate Larry Hoganwere immediately bullied by the former 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.”
The Firebrand congresswoman also posted the inverted American flag that has become the symbol of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement that Trump started with allies before the US January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol.
The rapid, shrill, and deepening devotion to Trump despite his own felony conviction shows how completely Republican leaders and lawmakers are imbued with his baseless grievances about a “rigged” system and dangerous conspiracies of a “weaponized” government in their own attacks on the president Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Instead of eschewing Trump’s escalating authoritarian language or ensuring that they will provide checks and balances for a second Trump term, Republican senators and representatives are reshaping longstanding trust in American governance and setting the stage for what they plan to do if Trump returns to power.
On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan demanded that prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo appear for a June hearing on Trump’s “weaponization of the federal government” and “unprecedented political persecution” — despite the fact that Biden, as president, has no authority over the state courts in New York.
“What we are preparing for is that if Trump wins, he will use the apparatus of state to attack 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 telling you that he is going to use the state apparatus to attack his political opponents.”
At his Trump Tower in New York on Friday, the former president returned to the kind of attacks he has repeatedly made in campaign speeches, portraying Biden as the one who is “corrupt” and the US as a “fascist” nation.
Trump called members of the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “criminals” and said Biden was a “Manchurian candidate,” a phrase inspired by the 1960s film in which a puppet of an American political enemy is depicted.
A Trump campaign memo included talking points for Republican lawmakers, suggesting they call the case a “sham,” “hoax,” “witch hunt,” “election interference” and “litigation” engineered by Biden, whom he called a “scumbag” .
Biden faces no such charges, and the Republican Party’s efforts in the House of Representatives do impeach the president over his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings have largely come to a standstill. Hunter Biden does is due to appear in court next week on an unrelated firearms charge in Wilmington, Delaware.
President Biden said this on Friday that “it is reckless, dangerous and irresponsible for someone to say this is rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”
Asked later at the White House if this could happen to him, Biden said, “Not at all. I didn’t do anything wrong. The system still works.”
As for Trump’s claims that the matter is being orchestrated by the Democratic president to hurt him politically, Biden joked: “I didn’t know I was that powerful.”
In the hush money case, Trump was found guilty of trying to influence the 2016 election by falsifying payments to a porn actor to bury her story of an affair. He faces three other misdemeanor charges, including the federal case over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. But they are unlikely to be heard before the expected election rematch with Biden in November.
Thursday’s verdict came after a jury in 2023 found Trump liable sexual abuse against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and a judge in a 2024 business fraud case ruled that Trump lied about his wealth for years, order him to pay a fine of as much as $355 million.
Almost to a person, the Republicans in Congress who spoke out were a unique voice for Trump.
Speaker Mike Johnson on “Fox & Friends” amplified the claim, without evidence, that Democrats are trying to hurt Trump. He said he believes the Supreme Court should “step in” to resolve the case.
“The justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they are as concerned about that as we are,” the Republican chairman said.
Outgoing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he expected Trump to win the hush money case on appeal, but the three senators seeking to replace him as leader echoed Trump in stronger criticism of the justice system.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota said the case was “politically motivated.” Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the verdict “a shame.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida said anyone who calls themselves party leader should “stand up and condemn what he called “lawless election interference.”
And Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican known as a bipartisan leader, said the prosecutor “filed this charge precisely because of who the defendant was, and not because of any specific criminal conduct.”
With sentencing in the hush money case expected in July before the Republican National Convention, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said the GOP should move up the convention to expedite Trump’s nomination as the party’s presidential pick.
Republican legal counsel Mike Davis, a former top Senate aide who has been mentioned for a future position in the Trump administration, distributed a letter outlining next steps.
“Dear Republicans,” he said in a post Friday. If their response to the guilty verdict was “we must respect the process” or “we are too principled to retaliate,” he suggested they do two things: one was an expletive, the other: “Leave the party.” ‘
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, circulated his own letter suggesting that it was the White House that was “ridiculing the rule of law” and changing politics in “un-American” ways. He and other senators threatened to halt business in the Senate until Republicans took action.
“Those who turned our justice system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,” Lee said.
__ Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Ali Swenson and Chris Megerian contributed to this story.