Donald Trump’s reaction to his conviction in the New York hush money case was predictable.
His claim of political persecution has been his shtick for years, so for him to sound even a note of contriteness after being found guilty on 34 felony counts would be so out of character that you’d have to think a body double was standing in for the former president.
What is a bit stunning, though, is how several prominent Republican members of Congress and other public officials who practiced law before entering politics have jumped on the Trump bandwagon of trying to totally undermine the public’s faith in the judicial process.
Speaker of the House Michael Johnson called the case “a purely political exercise, not a legal one.” In doing so, Johnson echoed comments he made outside the New York courthouse a few weeks earlier when he was the highest-ranking toady to act as mouthpieces for the former president in an orchestrated effort to get around the presiding judge’s gag order.
Mississippi’s own senior Sen. Roger Wicker, who has moved closer to the Trump camp as a result of a minor primary scare earlier this year, released a statement shortly after the verdict in which he called the prosecution “an outrageous perversion of our system of justice.”
At least six Mississippi GOP congressmen or state officeholders with law degrees said something similar or worse.
One would expect more temperate remarks about the judicial system from those who studied and practiced law. Instead, they are contributing to the erosion in respect for the third branch of government, bringing it down toward the same low regard in which the legislative and executive branches are already held.
The critics did not have to cast aspersions to say there was a reasonable legal argument that New York District Attorney, Alvin Bragg and his associates were reaching in their prosecution of Trump. The falsifying of business records to hide a hush-money payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels was only a felony if it could be proven that the deceit was connected to the commission of another crime — in this case a New York statute that prohibits using unlawful means to promote or prevent the election of any person for public office. The jury, however, found the prosecution’s case convincing that Trump’s underlying motivation for the “creative bookkeeping” was to further his ultimately successful bid in 2016 for the presidency.
The contention of Trump and his supporters that the prosecution was stacked against him is, of course, true. In any criminal case, the prosecution is stacked against the defendant it believes has committed a crime. But that is balanced by the defendant’s counsel, which is stacked in the defendant’s favor.
That’s how the adversarial criminal justice system works. One side argues for conviction, one side for acquittal, and the jury decides which side makes the best case.
If Trump’s trial was nothing but a politically motivated sham proceeding, as he and his supporters claim, all that Trump’s lawyers had to do was convince one juror of it. New York may be a heavily Democratic stronghold, but it is highly improbable that there was not a single juror of the 12 who was open to the possibility that Trump was innocent, or that the prosecution was acting with an ulterior motive. Since the defense could not persuade at least one of the 12 to hold out, it suggests that the prosecution’s case was just that much stronger.
To try to turn Trump’s conviction into something more sinister just feeds into a growing paranoia in this country that trusts no institution as being impartial.
The judicial system is not perfect, but it is the only way we have to settle legal disputes short of violence and to hold those accountable who break the law.
Trump wants to tear down confidence in the system in order to deflect attention from his serial lying and multiple indictments — and now first-in-presidential-history conviction. The danger of giving credence to Trump’s conspiracy theory, as Johnson, Wicker and others are doing, is that it encourages the type of disrespect for authority and institutions that led to the siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Once people believe that democratic institutions are rigged against them, they have no qualms about defying them, even to the point of violence.
Although most of the Republican reaction to the New York verdict has been shamefully in lockstep with Trump’s attacks on the judicial process, there are a few exceptions, such as state Sen. Brice Wiggins.
Wiggins, also a lawyer and a former criminal prosecutor, did not follow the GOP line but rather held true to the ethics of the legal profession, which generally calls for deference to the jury system.
“All jurors deserve thanks and respect. They are the foundation of the best judicial system in the world (though not perfect),” the Gulf Coast lawmaker posted to X. “The GOP MSGOP leadership has a lot of soul searching to do.”
Wiggins is right on both counts, but probably the only thing that might prompt this state’s GOP leadership to do any soul-searching will be if Trump loses the election on Nov. 5.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
