WASHINGTON (AP) — Moments after Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges of amassing classified documents and then conspiring to obstruct an investigation into them, Republicans in Congress turned their backs on him.
Spokesman Kevin McCarthy launched a fundraising email denouncing the “witch hunt” against the former president and asking donors to sign up and “stand with Trump.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell shied away from criticizing the former president or assuring that the national judiciary will be impartial, refusing to take questions about the unprecedented indictment.
And at a public meeting in the basement of the Capitol, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared the case against Trump to the federal prosecution of people in the January 6, 2021 uprising, suggesting in both cases that it was the Department of Justice, not the accused, under scrutiny.
The growing legal risk Trump finds himself in has quickly become a political rallying cry for Republicans, many of whom acknowledged they had not fully read the 49-page federal indictment but were quick to stand by alongside the accused former president, adopting his grievances against the federal justice system as his own.
It’s an unparalleled example of how Trump has transformed the Republican Party that once embraced “law and order” but now defends, justifies and explains the serious charges he faces on multiple counts of violating the Freedom of Information Act. Espionage involving some of the country’s most sensitive nationals. security secrets
At the same time, Trump is rewriting the job description of what it means to lead a major American political party. With a new run for the White House, Trump is attacking the basic American justice system that is central to democracy and shaping an emboldened generation of Republican members of Congress to follow him.
“Keep up with Trump,” tweeted Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth-ranking House GOP leader.
“I will stand with President Trump tonight in full support,” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama tweeted before running to join the former president at his private golf club in Bedminster for a campaign event after the federal court hearing.
“I stand with him right now,” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said outside the Capitol. “Ten fingers down.”
Despite two impeachment trials, state charges of money payments to the porn star, a pair of probes into Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 election and now the deepening federal case over his classified documents, Trump has demonstrated an exaggerated ability to not only withstand legal scrutiny. but to prosper from it.
As Trump’s defenders in Congress see it, he will rise politically, precisely because of all the investigations against him. Republicans in Congress are working hard to reframe the historic impeachment of a former president as unfair political persecution rather than federal charges of wrongdoing.
“I’ve been pretty clear throughout the whole process: I think the country is very frustrated, when you don’t feel like there’s equal justice.” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol.
“This president hasn’t even been out of office for four years, but you’re holding him to a standard you’ve never held anyone else to.”
It’s an approach that echoed through the halls.
Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Florida, said the case smacks of a “two-tiered” justice system, adding that voters are telling her they would “never in a million years have voted for Trump, but this is a madness”.
“A bogus investigation,” Donalds said.
“Political success work,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who said he did read the entire indictment.
Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said Trump is just the Justice Department’s “latest victim.” He announced that he would block all DOJ nominees unless the attorney general changed course.
“If Merrick Garland wants to use these officials to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents, we will stop his department,” Vance said in a statement.
Republicans also see the federal case against Trump as a winning political strategy: a way to motivate aggrieved voters to the polls in the 2024 elections, when the House and a third of the Senate will be running for another term alongside the presidential candidates .
House Republicans were fundraising for the impeachment, and Republican National Congressional Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Hudson joined Trump on the plane from a campaign rally in Georgia to one in North Carolina over the weekend where the congressman introduced the former president over the weekend. stage.
“A lot of people are going to vote,” Trump told the crowd in Bedminster Wednesday evening. “They know what we’ve been through.”
The details of 37 counts against Trump in the indictment are vivid. Prosecutors presented explicit evidence of how they allege Trump knowingly stored highly sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and then planned to provide false information to investigators trying to recover the government documents.
Trump could face a potentially lengthy prison term if convicted of the charges.
Some Republicans acknowledge that Trump’s hoarding of documents — in dozens of boxes in the bathroom, on a dance floor and spilled in a storage room — was problematic. Prosecutors said the documents included material on nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities, among others, some of the most secret information held by the US government.
Sen. Marco Rubio, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump should never have stored the documents at his home, but said he suggested there was no real harm, already that Trump did not appear to hand over the documents to China. Saudi Arabia or other countries.
Rubio was more concerned that Trump’s impeachment would “unleash a fury” in a politically divided nation.
Few voices in Congress dared to publicly raise serious questions, concerns, or criticisms about Trump’s behavior.
“The real question is, why did he do it?” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the only Republican senator to vote twice to convict Trump in the impeachment trials. “Why should the country go through all this anguish and turmoil when all it had to do was hand over the documents when asked?”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said of what she has seen in the indictment: “I find it pretty damning.”
Around the same time Trump was pleading not guilty to the charges, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida was leading a panel discussion with Greene and others about the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump supporters that they were trying to challenge. and nullify Biden’s election.
Greene opened his remarks by saying “it was heavy on my heart that we’re doing this today.”
He compared the two historic moments in American history: “when President Trump was being prosecuted because of the armed government that has been armed against each and every one of you.”
Trump had encouraged the crowd to go to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and fight for his presidency as Congress certified the election won by Biden. About 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the Capitol riots, including members of extremist groups convicted of sedition.
Many of those defendants supported Trump’s claims of a stolen election. But the states certified the results and experts and judges said that the election was not rigged, he just lost. Five people died in the Capitol siege, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police.
Greene and others draw a cross-line between the prosecutions of the Jan. 6 attendees and the case against Trump as evidence of a “weaponization” of the justice system.
“It all started on the day, January 6, when we were just doing our constitutional duty to oppose” Biden’s election, the congresswoman said.
Asked if they were trying to rewrite history on Jan. 6, Gaetz, a top Trump ally, said, “We’re trying to correct history.”
Across the Capitol, at his weekly news conference, McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, refused to use his position to take sides.
Asked about Trump’s impeachment, he said: “I’m not going to start commenting on the different candidates that we have for president.”
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Groves, Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.
