Republican officials are rallying around Donald Trump following news of his indictment, threatening to use their power to shield the former president from any accountability. “Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote Thursday, in one of several GOP attacks on the Manhattan district attorney. “The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”
“The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to persecute Joe Biden’s chief political opponent President Trump ahead of the election,” added number three House Republican Elise Stefanik, who described Bragg as a “corrupt Socialist.” House Republicans, Stefanik continued, “will hold Alvin Bragg accountable.”
They didn’t detail exactly how the Republican majority would respond to Bragg’s charges, but Jim Jordan — head of the subcommittee investigating the so-called “weaponization of the federal government” — and other Republican committee heads have previously demanded the DA testify before them on Capitol Hill. “Bragg’s impending indictment is motivated by political calculations,” Jordan wrote in letters to former prosecutors in the Manhattan DA’s office last week, as he ramped up his investigation into Trump’s investigators. “Outrageous,” Jordan tweeted Thursday.
Bragg rebuked Jordan and Republican committee chairs James Comer and Bryan Steil, with his office in a letter Friday accusing the GOP lawmakers of behaving like a “criminal defense counsel” for the former president and seeking to undermine the prosecution. “Like any other defendant, Mr. Trump is entitled to challenge these charges in court and avail himself of all processes and protections that New York State’s robust criminal procedure affords,” Bragg’s general counsel, Leslie B. Dubeck, wrote Friday. “What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State.”
But the GOP effort to protect Trump, who is said to be facing nearly three dozen counts stemming from the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, extended beyond Congress. (Trump has acknowledged the payments but claims no wrongdoing.) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential rival of Trump’s for the GOP nomination who has repeatedly been subjected to personal attacks from the former president, accused Bragg of “stretching the law to target a political opponent” and said he would “not assist in an extradition request” of his fellow Floridian, should Trump remain in Florida for his arraignment. “It is un-American,” DeSantis said, once again implying that Bragg is being controlled by George Soros — a frequent target of conservatives’ anti-semitic conspiracy theories. The sanctuary offer may be more symbolic than anything, considering Trump is reportedly expected to surrender himself in New York on Tuesday. But some of Trump’s allies, including Thomas Massie and Matt Gaetz, have suggested the former president should take DeSantis up on it.
Senator Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, even attempted to summon Trump’s supporters to provide financial assistance to the wealthy former president: “Give the president some money to fight this bullshit!” Graham said on Fox News Thursday night.
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The Republican shows of support have been absurd, especially considering they don’t know what the charges are and what evidence formed the basis of the grand jury’s indictment. But their defenses appear to be based on a simple premise — that Trump and other Republicans are above the law, and thus any prosecution they face is inherently political. The charges against Trump may be unprecedented, but they are not an assault on American democracy, as Republicans have cast them. What is an assault on our institutions and the rule of law: GOP officials vowing to use the power of their elected office to ward off prosecution of their party leader.