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 had his back.
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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.
Trump’s growing legal risk has quickly become a political rallying cry as they rush to stand by the impeached former president
Many Republicans say they haven’t fully read the 49-page indictment against Trump, but are adopting his complaints against the federal justice system as their own.
It is an example of how Trump has transformed the Republican Party that was once the party of “law and order” but is now attacking the very justice system at the foundation of American democracy.
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 steered clear of criticizing the former president, 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.
Trump’s growing legal jeopardy has quickly become a political rallying cry for Republicans, many of whom acknowledged they had not fully read the 49-page federal indictment but sided with the accused former president, taking his complaints against the federal justice system. like theirs
It is 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 Espionage Act in amass classified documents containing some of the country’s most sensitive national 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 American justice system that is central to democracy and encouraging Republican lawmakers to move on.
“Keep up with Trump,” tweeted Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth-ranking House Republican 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, New York state charges of money payments to the porn star, a pair of probes into Trump’s efforts to throw off the 2020 election and now the federal case over his classified documents , Trump has demonstrated his ability not only to 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 recasting the historic impeachment of a former president as unfair political persecution.
“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.”
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 “latest victim” of the Justice Department. 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 to motivate aggrieved voters to the polls in 2024, when the House and a third of the Senate will be running for another term along with presidential candidates.
House Republicans are 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 the Carolinas del Nord, where the congressman introduced the ex-president on stage.
“A lot of people are going to vote,” Trump told the crowd in Bedminster. “They know what we’ve been through.”
In a 37-count indictment, prosecutors alleged that 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 who tried to recover government documents. He could face a potentially lengthy prison term, if convicted.
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.
Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump should never have stored the documents at his home, but suggested there was no real harm because Trump did not appeared to deliver the documents to China and Saudi Arabia. or other countries. Rubio was more concerned that Trump’s impeachment would “unleash a fury” in a politically divided nation.
Only a few GOP voices in Congress dared to publicly raise serious questions 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 these defendants supported Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Five people died in the Capitol siege, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police.
Greene and the others claim that the prosecutions of the January 6th rioters and Trump are evidence of a “weaponization” of the justice system.
“It all started on the day, Jan. 6, when we were just doing our constitutional duty to oppose” Biden’s election, he said.
Asked if they were trying to rewrite history on Jan. 6, Gaetz, a 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.
This story has been corrected to show that Sen. Rubio is the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, not the Republican chairman.
