{"id":27977,"date":"2024-06-02T22:01:15","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T03:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=27977"},"modified":"2024-06-02T22:14:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T03:14:18","slug":"republicans-join-trumps-attacks-on-justice-system-and-campaign-of-vengeance-after-guilty-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=27977","title":{"rendered":"Republicans join Trump\u2019s attacks on justice system and campaign of vengeance after guilty verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Embracing Donald Trump\u2019s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system<\/u><\/a> after his historic guilty verdict<\/u><\/a>, Republicans in Congress are fervently enlisting themselves in his campaign of vengeance and political retribution as the GOP runs to reclaim the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost no Republican official<\/u><\/a> has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party\u2019s presidential candidate for the November election \u2014 in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case<\/u><\/a> or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And those Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump\u2019s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan<\/u><\/a> of Maryland, were instantly bullied by the former president\u2019s enforcers and told to \u201cleave the party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she\u2019s voting for Trump \u201cwhether he is a free man or a prisoner of the Biden regime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also posted the upside-down American flag<\/a> that has come to symbolize the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d movement Trump started with allies before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack<\/u><\/a> on the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The swift, strident and deepening commitment to Trump despite his felony conviction<\/u><\/a> shows how fully Republican leaders and lawmakers have been infused with his unfounded grievances of a \u201crigged\u201d system and dangerous conspiracies of \u201cweaponized\u201d government, using them in their own attacks on President Joe Biden<\/u><\/a> and the Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than shunning Trump\u2019s escalating authoritarian language or ensuring they will provide checks and balances for a second Trump term, the Republican senators and representatives are upturning longstanding faith in U.S. governance, and setting the stage for what they plan to do if Trump regains power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded the prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Matthew Colangelo appear for a June hearing on the \u201cweaponization of the federal government\u201d and \u201cthe unprecedented political prosecution\u201d of Trump \u2014 despite the fact that Biden, as president, has no authority over the state courts in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re gearing up for is if Trump wins, he\u2019s going to use the apparatus of the state to target his political opponents,\u201d said Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale and the author of \u201cHow Fascism Works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanley said history is full of examples of people not believing the rhetoric of authoritarians. \u201cBelieve what they say,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s literally telling you he\u2019s going to use the apparatus of the state to target his political opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At his Trump Tower on Friday in New York, the former president returned to the kinds of attacks he has repeatedly lodged in campaign speeches, portraying Biden as the one who is \u201ccorrupt\u201d and the U.S. as a \u201cfascist\u201d nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump called the members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol \u201cthugs\u201d and said Biden was a \u201cManchurian candidate,\u201d a phrase inspired by the 1960s movie portraying a puppet of a U.S. political enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Trump campaign memo contained talking points for Republican lawmakers, suggesting they call the case a \u201csham,\u201d \u201choax,\u201d \u201cwitch hunt,\u201d \u201celection interference\u201d and \u201clawfare\u201d designed by Biden, whom it called \u201ccrooked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden faces no such charges, and the House GOP\u2019s efforts to impeach the president<\/u><\/a> over his son Hunter Biden\u2019s business dealings have largely stalled out. Hunter Biden is due in court next week<\/u><\/a> on an unrelated firearms charge in Wilmington, Delaware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Biden said Friday<\/u><\/a> that \u201cit\u2019s reckless, it\u2019s dangerous, it\u2019s irresponsible, for anyone to say this is rigged just because they don\u2019t like the verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked later at the White House if this could happen to him, Biden said: \u201cNot at all. I didn\u2019t do anything wrong. The system still works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Trump\u2019s claims the case is being orchestrated by the Democratic president to hurt him politically, Biden quipped: \u201cI didn\u2019t know I was that powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hush money case, Trump was found guilty of trying to influence the 2016 election by falsifying payment to a porn actor to bury her story of an affair. He faces three other felony indictments<\/u><\/a>, including the federal case over his effort to overturn the 2020 election. But they are not likely to be heard before November\u2019s expected election rematch with Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday\u2019s verdict came after a jury in 2023 found Trump to be liable for sexual abuse against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll<\/u><\/a> and a judge in a 2024 business fraud case determined that Trump lied about his wealth for years,<\/u><\/a> ordering him to pay a staggering $355 million in penalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost to a person, the Republicans in Congress who spoke out provided a singular voice for Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaker Mike Johnson on \u201cFox & Friends\u201d amplified the claim, without evidence, that Democrats are trying to hurt Trump. Johnson, R-La., said he thinks the Supreme Court should \u201cstep in\u201d to resolve the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they\u2019re deeply concerned about that as we are,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outgoing Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he expected Trump would win the hush money case on appeal, but the three senators seeking to replace McConnell as leader echoed Trump with stronger criticisms of the judicial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Dakota Sen. John Thune said the case was \u201cpolitically motivated.\u201d Texas Sen. John Cornyn called the verdict \u201ca disgrace.\u201d Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said that everyone who calls themselves a party leader \u201cmust stand up and condemn\u201d what he called \u201clawless election interference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is known as a bipartisan leader, said the prosecutor \u201cbrought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 speed up Trump\u2019s nomination as the party\u2019s presidential pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican judicial advocate Mike Davis, a former top Senate aide mentioned for a future Trump administration position, circulated a letter outlining the next steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDear Republicans,\u201d he said in a Friday post. If their response to the guilty verdict was \u201cwe must respect the process\u201d or \u201cwe are too principled to retaliate,\u201d he suggested they do two things: One was an expletive, the other: \u201cLeave the party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, circulated his own letter in which he suggested it was the White House that \u201cmade a mockery\u201d of the rule of law and altered politics in \u201cun-American\u201d ways. He and other senators threatened to stall Senate business until Republicans take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Embracing Donald Trump\u2019s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system after his historic guilty verdict, Republicans in Congress are fervently enlisting themselves in his campaign of vengeance and political retribution as the GOP runs to reclaim the White House. Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party\u2019s presidential candidate for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1580,3014,1230],"class_list":["post-27977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-republicans","tag-retaliation","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27981,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27977\/revisions\/27981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}