Donald Trump isn’t an ex-president – it will take our nation back, not ours, but ours – Does the New York prosecutor have the power to defend himself against the alleged hush money
Trump’s prediction on Saturday that he could be arrested this week – and his attempt to ignite a preemptive backlash – made what had been the theoretical prospect of an ex-president and 2024 candidate being criminally charged appear much more real. And it signaled America is headed for an even more politically divisive ordeal that will test his influence over the GOP.
As a possible indictment looms over former President Donald Trump, House Republicans are coming to his defense and arguing that Alvin Bragg — the New York prosecutor investigating alleged hush money paid by Trump to adult film actress Stormy Daniels — is politically motivated and his probe won’t stand up in court.
After Trump warned he could be arrested, his allies have been using their new House majority to demand Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s testimony and seek to thwart his investigation relating to an alleged hush money payment to an adult film star before the 2016 election. It looks like an extraordinary attempt to influence an open grand jury investigation.
The credibility of a possible prosecution could be challenged by the fact that it would rely on Michael Cohen, who has a history of lying and was a central player in the Daniels matter.
But the ex-president launched a characteristic effort to undermine attempts to make himaccount, try to intimidate prosecutors, mobilize his supporters, and force top GOP officials to rally to his side. Every American has the right to express their political opinions, but this weekend’s call for protesters to take our nation back struck an ominous tone since he showed on January 6, 2021, that he was willing to inflame violence to further his interests.
It may, as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said last Sunday, harm Trump’s campaign for a second White House stint — “being indicted never helps anybody. It isn’t a help. National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry believes it may have a different effect, serving to reinforce more Republicans to Trump’s side.
Most of the Republicans in congress and the officials are required to appease Trump in order to preserve their political careers, because of his hold on the GOP’s most fervent supporters.
In a perfect world, if Trump were indicted, someone with the power to prove a case can do so, since the case isn’t supported by evidence. But Trump and his allies are not waiting for that moment, and in the process, are offering a preview of the months of deepening political turmoil that a prosecution could entail – not just in Manhattan but in multiple other investigations against him. The probes into his role in the Capitol insurrection, his attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and his handling of classified documents may have far greater constitutional implications than the Bragg case.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday called it “the weakest case out there.” The California Republican, who has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan DA used federal funds to probe the hush money payment, said at a news conference that he had already spoken to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan – who is investigating “the weaponization” of the government against political opponents – about looking into that question.
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But the speaker also said people should not protest over what may or not happen and insisted that Trump didn’t want that either. McCarthy said they wanted no violence or harm to anyone else.
The more interesting question is whether mainstream Republicans are able to unload both rhetorical barrels on the Manhattan district attorney’s office while also leaving some daylight between themselves and the former president. His one-time Vice President, Mike Pence, recently sought to straddle the fence, calling the potential charges a “politically charged prosecution,” even as he criticized Trump’s actions in inciting violent protests on January 6.
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said it is time for Republicans to move on from Trump, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” the Bragg investigation was “building a lot of sympathy for the former president.” He added: “I (had) coffee this morning with some folks, and none of them were big Trump supporters, but they all said they felt like he was being attacked.”
Hanging over everything is the mind-bending possibility that, for the first time ever, a former president could be indicted. And because he’s running for the White House again, any indictment almost certainly means yet another US election will be tarnished by his claims of plots against him and his followers.
— There is also the issue of whether the political division and trauma of putting Trump on trial would be in the wider national interest — at least in a fairly constrained case that seems to hold fewer lasting constitutional implications than those connected to the January 6 investigations. History may not look kindly on any failed prosecution.
The fact that the Daniels case dates back to an election that is now more than six years old, even as the nation faces another White House campaign, could also raise questions for the public, especially given the uncertainty about the case for anyone outside the small bubble of the investigation. Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday that “nobody in our nation is or should be above the law.” If the charges are brought, he hopes that they have a strong case. And there are certainly risks involved here.”
Kelly said that Trump, nearly eight years after being catapulted onto the scene with an upstart presidential campaign, is again shattering convention about the role of presidents in national life. He may be moving to the center again, in the most contentious ways of the national debate.
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The Republicans who wrote the letter wrote it after they called for Bragg to testify before their committees, and criticized his investigation into Trump as an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.
Three committee chairs wrote a letter saying that a possible indictment was “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and was based on a novel legal theory that federal authorities didn’t pursue.
They added that if Bragg does indict Trump, Bragg’s actions “will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election.”
He is expected to appear before Congress as soon as possible but there is no set date for the hearing. They gave Bragg a deadline of Thursday to respond to them to set up a possible appearance.
The former president, who is in the running for the Republican nomination in four years, is dominating the conversation as the House Republicans are huddling.
Kevin McCarthy is the Speaker of the House and his job may depend on the patronage of Donald Trump. Or as the California Republican put it, House committees have the right to ask questions.
“One of the reasons we won races in New York is based upon this DA of not protecting the citizens of New York, and now he’s spending his time on this,” McCarthy said. “And the statute of limitations are gone.” He added about an indictment: “This will not hold up in court, if this is what he wants to do.”
The Bragg Investigation of Donald Trump, a GOP Senator and a Republican stalwart who supports a porn star in the United States
As House Republicans sought to showcase their legislative agenda in the majority, questions about Trump continued to be front and center — a dynamic they struggled with during his time in the White House.
At a bilingual press conference with Hispanic Republicans Monday morning, the first question was about Bragg’s probe. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., used the same refrain most GOP lawmakers have used, telling reporters, “It certainly smells like it’s political.”
Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the House are using government power to try to keep his legal threats at bay, the same way the former president taught them.
The chairmen claimed in Saturday’s letter that Bragg had not disputed “the central allegations at issue” — that his office is under “political pressure from left-wing activists and former prosecutors” and is “planning to use an alleged federal campaign finance violation, previously declined by federal prosecutors, as a vehicle to extend the statute of limitations on an otherwise misdemeanor offense and indict for the first time in history a former President of the United States.”
Trump’s calls for protests, meanwhile, have authorities on edge in New York, where security cameras and barricades have been erected, and in Washington amid painful flashbacks to his incitement of violence to further his personal and political ends on January 6, 2021.
The prosecutor might be charged with using a political agenda to push for charges against a porn star who paid her a sum of money to keep her identity a secret over an alleged affair. Conservative stalwart Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who has already endorsed DeSantis despite him not even having officially announced yet, offered a similar version of this strategy on a radio show.
He thinks justice isn’t being equal to others, especially in the history of where we are. If a local democrat decides to run for president, it would be hard to believe it would happen across the country.
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But the use of government power to advance political ends appears to mirror exactly the behavior Republicans, in their new subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, are accusing the FBI, the Justice Department and other government agencies of.
In a new letter to the Republican lawmakers who requested information earlier this week, the general counsel of the district attorney’s office said they lacked a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.
Republicans, along with all of us, have no idea what the evidence against Donald Trump is other than hints contained in media accounts and a case involving his former lawyer who was previously sent to jail for tax fraud.
CNN reported on Monday that prosecutors in the Atlanta area are weighing charges of racketeering and conspiracy in connection with the efforts to steal the election in Georgia.
“My big question in the New York case is what has changed?” CNN’s Carrie Cordero talked with Wolf Blitzer on Monday on theSituation Room. This case is almost seven years old and the facts are not new. And so the big question that I have with respect to New York is what has changed more recently in the past year or so that has gotten it to this point?”
This is a complicated legal narrative that might convince a jury but could also be a tricky sell in the wider fight for public opinion in such a highly political case.
In a new wrinkle in the grand jury’s apparent endgame on Monday, Robert Costello, an attorney who has previously represented Trump allies like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani, testified before for nearly three hours after appearing at the request of Trump’s legal team.
Without corroborating evidence the idea of a case being solely based on Cohen’s word seems unlikely. But there is much about this grave matter that the rest of the country doesn’t yet understand.
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That is not, however, quelling the storm that has accompanied Trump’s return to political center stage, which could reach hurricane strength in the days ahead.
Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is based in Washington, DC. He was a policy adviser to the Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
The former president may be viewed as a liability by many Republican primary voters, so it is possible that they will choose to support him instead of being persuaded to vote for a safer option once the campaign begins.
But the biggest political impact may be in creating a tightrope that Trump’s would-be challengers, and other Republicans interested in charting a post-Trump future, will need to walk.
But the danger facing Republicans is that they will either have to bind themselves even tighter to the mast of an intensely polarizing figure, or risk splitting the party by not coming out in his defense. Navigating between those pitfalls will require some willingness to criticize Trump, while going hammer and tongs against the likely decision to prosecute a rather arcane alleged violation of state law.
The ancient Greeks called it apophasis or the art of claiming that you are not bringing up a topic in a debate. The Republicans who offer a response with implicit criticism of Trump and explicit criticism of Bragg are a textbook example of the strategy.
There is a risk of being a little too clever. DeSantis’ quip infuriated the usual MAGA online crowd, including the former president himself. But solely concentrating their rhetorical ire on the legal adventures of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, without laying out subtle critiques of Trump, would make it harder for Republicans to then run or endorse other candidates for the 2024 nomination.
Successful candidates and parties need to have a compelling story around their campaign. Without making a case, directly or indirectly, for why Trump should not be the presumptive nominee, the narrative of the Republican Party will center around Trump and his adversaries. If a reply solely focused on the sins of prosecutors in New York is chosen, it will be risky for Trump to claim the nomination.
After disappointing electoral outcomes in the last two years, Republicans should know the perils of putting all their eggs in the same basket. Cementing Trump as the sole figurehead of GOP politics puts future general election victories at risk. But Republican primary voters will be quick to punish any candidates who are too eager to throw Trump under the bus.
While the office of the District Attorney in Manhattan defended their investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged payments to an adult film actress, the House Republicans launched an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution.
She added that, “regardless, the proper forum for such a challenge is the Courts of New York, which are equipped to consider and review such objections.”
She asked for the committees to confer with Bragg’s office to discuss whether or not the records could be turned over without damaging the interests of New York.
Jordan told CNN “we’re reviewing the letter” when asked for his response to the letter from the general counsel of the Manhattan DA. Jordan repeated his answer when asked if he would subpoena Bragg.
Comer told CNN the “Judiciary [committee] is the one that’s taking the lead on this” when asked about the Manhattan DA office’s response to the initial request from Congress.
Dubeck noted in her response that the congressional request came after Donald Trump made a false assumption that he would be arrested the next day. Neither fact is valid for Congressional inquiry.
She said that the Constitution’s 10th Amendment limited the federal government’s authority over local law enforcement and argued that Congress specially is not an executive branch entity with law enforcement powers.
She pointed to laws that protect grand jury secrecy, and said that because the committees wanted non-public information they risked interfering with law enforcement.
Dubeck also scoffed at the Republicans’ claims that they needed testimony from Bragg and the requested documents as part of a congressional review of federal public safety funds.
Dubeck wrote, “the Letter does not suggest any way in which either the District Attorney’s testimony about his prosecutorial decisions or the documents and communications of former Assistant District Attorneys on a pending criminal investigation would shed light on that review.”
To help Congress understand how the office uses federal funds, we are preparing and will submit a letter describing its use of federal funds.
“The DA’s Office will not allow a Congressional investigation to impede the exercise of New York’s sovereign police power,” General Counsel for the District Attorney of New York County Leslie Dubeck wrote Thursday.
The letter from the chairmen of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back on his case against appearing for a transcribed interview with their panels and argued that they now feel compelled to consider whether Congress should take legislative action on three separate issues “to protect former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials.”
Going further than they have before — Jordan, Comer and Steil wrote that they may choose to consider three areas of legislation, including broadening “the preemption provision in the Federal Election Campaign Act,” adding that such a measure could “have the effect of better delineating the prosecutorial authorities of federal and local officials in this area and blocking the selective or politicized enforcement by state and local prosecutors of campaign finance restrictions pertaining to federal elections.”
They may consider tying federal funds to better metrics for public safety funds, due to the accusations that the Manhattan district attorney is using funds for his investigation into Trump.
They are considering a measure to improve the relationship between special counsels and other prosecuting entities, because of the circumstances of the Trump investigation.