WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress are embracing Donald Trump’s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system after his historic guilty verdict and are fervently engaging in his campaign of revenge and political retaliation in the Republican Party’s attempt to Win back the White House.
Almost no Republican officials have stepped up to suggest that Trump should not be the party’s presidential nominee for the November election — in fact, some have tried to expedite his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush-money case against the former president, or of the twelve jurors who unanimously delivered their verdict.
In fact, any Republicans who raised doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top Senate candidate Larry Hogan, were immediately bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to ” had 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 symbolizes the “Stop the Steal” movement that Trump started with allies before the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The rapid, shrill, and deepening devotion to Trump, despite his 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 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 the “weaponization of the federal government” and “the unprecedented political persecution” of Trump — 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 state apparatus to attack his political opponents,” he said. Jason Stanleya 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 to impeach the president over his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings have largely stalled. Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear in court next week on an unrelated firearms charge in Wilmington, Delaware.
President Biden said Friday that “it is reckless, dangerous and irresponsible for anyone 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 felony 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 for sexual abuse against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and a judge in a 2024 business fraud case found that Trump had lied about his wealth for years and ordered him to pay as much as $355 million to pay. in punishment.
Almost to a person, the Republicans in Congress who spoke out were a unique voice for Trump.
Speaker Mike Johnson on “Fox & Friends” amplified, without evidence, the claim 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.
