Republican allies of Donald Trump are calling for retaliatory prosecutions and other retaliation against Democrats in response to his felony conviction in New York.
Within hours after a jury found Trump guilty last week, the anger congealed into demands for action. Since then, prominent GOP leaders inside and outside the administration have demanded that elected Republicans use every available tool of power against Democrats, including targeted investigations and prosecutions.
The intensity of the anger and open desire to use the criminal justice system against Democrats after the verdict exceeds anything we have seen before in Trump’s tumultuous years in national politics. What’s different now is the group of Republicans who say retaliation is necessary and who no longer disguise their intentions with euphemisms.
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Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump who still helps guide his thinking on policy, barked a directive on Fox News after a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying financial records to cover a 2016 hush-money payment to cover up a porn actor. Miller asked a series of questions to Republicans at every level, including local district attorneys.
“Is every House committee controlled by Republicans and using its subpoena power in every way possible right now?” he demanded. “Is every Republican district attorney now launching whatever investigation is necessary?”
“Every facet of the Republican Party’s politics and power must now be used to stand up to Marxism and defeat these communists,” Miller said, drawing on the common insults Trump allies routinely throw at Democrats to use.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said in a text message to The New York Times on Tuesday that now was the time for obscure Republican prosecutors across the country to make a name for themselves prosecuting Democrats.
“There are dozens of ambitious, conniving attorneys general and district attorneys who need to ‘seize the day’ and own this moment in history,” Bannon wrote.
And Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee vying to become Trump’s running mate, wrote on the social platform now it was time to “fight fire with fire” – using flame emojis to represent the fire.
Trump campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Seeking retribution through the legal system is hardly a new concept for Trump. In 2016, he repeated and encouraged chants of “lock her up” against his opponent, Hillary Clinton, whom authorities declined to prosecute for using a private email server while she was secretary of state.
While president, Trump repeatedly told aides that he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies. The Justice Department opened several investigations into Trump’s opponents but ultimately brought no charges — infuriating Trump and contributing to a 2020 rift with his attorney general, Bill Barr. Last year, Trump promised that, if re-elected, he would appoint a “real special counsel” to “go after” Biden and his family.
Now it remains unclear whether the calls for legal retaliation will yield much in the form of actual prosecutions, at least in the short term. Without control of the White House, people close to Trump are urging prosecutors and attorneys general in red states to aggressively attack Democrats for unspecified crimes.
A central premise of their argument is that the four criminal cases against Trump in four different jurisdictions are unlawful and nothing more than a political weaponization of the legal system. They continue to advance, without evidence, the theory that all four cases are the result of a conspiracy by Biden — implicitly or explicitly rejecting the idea that Trump has been charged with crimes based on evidence.
But based on their premise that the charges — and now the convictions in the fraudulent corporate documents case — are baseless and trumped up for political reasons, they argue that Republican prosecutors not only should, but can, do the same to Democrats. In short, after accusing Democrats of “lawyering” – or using the law to wage war on political opponents – Republicans say they should respond in kind.
Some veteran Republican lawyers have tried to dress up the need for such retaliation as a matter of constitutional principle. Among those calling for eye-for-an-eye prosecutions is John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, best known as the author of the Bush administration’s once-secret legal memos declaring that the president can lawfully violate legal limits by torturing prisoners and tapping telephone conversations without warrants.
“To prevent the case against Trump from becoming permanent in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officials, even presidents,” Yoo wrote in an essay published by The National Review.
He added: “Only in-kind retaliation can provide the deterrence necessary to enforce a political version of mutually assured destruction; Without the threat of prosecution of their own leaders, Democrats will continue to indict future Republican presidents without restraint.”
Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill are less concerned about finding a high-minded constitutional rationale.
“President Biden should just be ready because come January 20th of next year, when he’s former President Joe Biden, what’s good for the goose is good for the goose,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a close Trump ally, in an appearance on the pro-Trump network Newsmax.
Jackson said: “I’m going to encourage all of my colleagues and everyone over whom I have any influence as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for any wrongdoing that is being committed. there at the moment related to this family.
Some of the rhetoric goes even further.
“Not just prison, they should get the death penalty,” Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist with a history of expressing bigoted views, said in a podcast after the verdict. Loomer, a former Republican candidate for a Florida House of Representatives seat, is not officially part of the Trump campaign. However, Trump has praised her as “very special,” invited her to travel with him on his private plane and met her at his private clubs.
On social media, there has been an explosion of violent rhetoric and threats against New York criminal trial judge Juan M. Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the charges against Trump.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close Trump ally and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter this week demanding testimony from Bragg and one of his top trial lawyers in the case, Matthew Colangelo.
Bragg’s office has not yet responded to the letter, but the demand appears to pave the way for a possible subpoena and a lawsuit. After the indictment last year, Jordan subpoenaed a former prosecutor in Bragg’s office, Mark Pomerantz, who ultimately had to make a statement about the investigation.
Jordan also proposed this week to ban federal law enforcement grants from going to Bragg’s office and to the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump faces state charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called on the Supreme Court on Fox News to “step in” and overturn the Manhattan conviction, granting Trump immunity from prosecution. In the Senate, a group of Trump allies signed a letter declaring they will oppose major legislation and nominees for the Biden administration, even though they generally do not vote for Biden’s policies and nominees anyway.
But the more extreme calls for not just surveillance and political obstruction, but also revenge prosecutions are coming from former senior Trump administration officials and people close to the former president, who are expected to make an even bigger push in a potential second term. will play a role. Their message is often apocalyptic.
There is no longer room for weaklings who place decency over decency and restraint, they say.
Mike Davis, a former attorney for the Senate Judiciary Committee and a close associate of Trump, is calling for an investigation into the investigators, similar to the way the Justice Department under Trump investigated the special counsel led by John Durham used in a years-long, failed attempt. to find a basis to charge senior Obama administration officials with a crime over the Russia investigation.
“The Republican attorneys general in Georgia and Florida and the county attorney in Maricopa County, Arizona, should open investigations” into the prosecutors and investigators pursuing charges against Trump and his allies, Davis said. He added: “Then on Day 1, if he wins, President Trump must open a criminal civil rights investigation.”
Jeff Clark, a former Trump Justice Department official charged in the Georgia election case for his role in helping Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 vote in that state, made another suggestion. He has called for “brave” prosecutors in conservative areas to file lawsuits in federal court against people involved in criminal cases against Trump, under federal laws that allow people to seek monetary damages from government officials who… violate constitutional rights.
His theory is that the cases are a conspiracy to prevent Trump from actually running for president. However, it remains unclear why local criminal prosecutors would have legal standing to go to federal court and file such lawsuits. A spokesperson for Clark’s employer, the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank, did not respond to a request for comment.
There is no room on this issue for moderate or traditional Republicans like Larry Hogan, a former governor of Maryland and a prominent Republican recruit, to run for Senate in the blue state. Hogan made an unforgivable mistake in the eyes of the Trump team when he implored Americans to “respect the verdict and the legal process” regardless of the outcome.
Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser, addressed Hogan in a post on X: “You just ended your campaign.” And while a Hogan victory could make the difference between whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate next year, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who is also co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said on CNN that Hogan “deserves no one’s respect.” in the Republican Party.”
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