Some repeated Trump’s claims that the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, had not been impartial. Others argued without evidence that the case, filed in New York, was an example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the justice system. Others accused the jury of not reaching a fair decision. I have confidence in the 12 Americans who have been selected to rule on this case.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told Fox News on Sunday that Republicans would “fight back with every tool we have.”
He noted that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has invited Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the lead prosecutor to appear at the House Select Committee on the Judiciary’s June 13 hearing on federal weaponization.
Though Manhattan’s district attorney is a locally elected office, Johnson linked the ruling to the Biden administration, suggesting, without evidence, that it was the result of pressure from Biden and federal Democrats to prosecute Trump.
“We’re going to use the tools we have in Congress, in the House, to exercise our oversight responsibility,” Johnson said, and the hearings will “examine what prosecutors at the state and federal level are doing to exert political retribution within our justice system to go after political opponents of federal officials, like Donald Trump.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who supported the former president in March despite a longstanding strained relationship with him, also criticized the trial process, saying: “These charges should never have been brought in the first place.” McConnell said on X on Thursday.“We hope that the conviction will be overturned on appeal.”
Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and daughter-in-law of former President Trump, slammed Marchan in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, saying that “Mr. Marchan should never have been in charge of this case” and that the entire trial was a “waste of time.”
“This isn’t the United States of America,” she said. “This is the kind of thing you see in the Communist Soviet Union.”
Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe said the attack on the courts, combined with a larger attack on the election, was “alarming.”
“These are all symptoms of an increasingly serious ill in our social and political order that could easily pave the way for dictatorship,” Tlaib said in an interview.
Several moderate Republicans also came to the former president’s defense, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who voted to convict Trump on an impeachment charge of inciting insurrection in 2021 and has pledged not to support him for reelection.
“It is a cornerstone of our American justice system that the government prosecutes cases for alleged criminal conduct, regardless of who the defendant is. In this case, the opposite has happened,” Senator Collins said in a statement. She specifically attacked District Attorney Bragg, saying he “brought these charges precisely because of who the defendants are, not any particular criminal conduct.”
“The political context of this case further blurs the lines between the judicial and electoral systems, and the decision is likely to be subject to a lengthy appeals process,” she said.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, similarly criticized the district attorney.
“Mr. Bragg should have settled the case against Mr. Trump. … But he made a political decision,” Romney said. Said “Bragg may have won the battle for now, but he may have lost the political war,” said MacKay Coppins, a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Romney biographer. “Democrats think they can put out Trump’s fire with oxygen. This is political malfeasance.” (No plea deal was publicly known before the trial, but Bragg couldn’t have unilaterally settled the case; Trump would have had to agree to a plea deal.)
Greg Nunziata, who heads the Rule of Law Institute, said it’s fair to question whether the case was an appropriate exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
He added that Collins’ comments were “a criticism of aspects of this particular prosecution and do not call into question the legitimacy of the justice system as a whole.”
Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel warned of the consequences of attacking an independent branch of government.
“If you look around the world and look at democracies and former democracies that have fallen into authoritarianism, you will see that in every one of them there has been a concerted attack on the independence of the judiciary,” Vogel said.
Many of Trump’s longtime allies were critical of the trial’s outcome, arguing that a guilty verdict would favor Trump.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) likened the incident to “fascism.”
“What happened in New York is shameful,” Vance told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday. “Sending a political opponent to prison is a blessing that happened in New York and not in the rest of the country.”
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate and a potential running mate for Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that a conviction would persuade Republicans.
“There’s no question that this ruling has really unified the party,” he said. “I’m definitely seeing Never-Trumpists calling me and saying, ‘Tim, I’m on board with this now. I’ve seen this dual justice system work against the president of the United States, and it could work against me.'”
Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.), another of Trump’s running mates, was asked by CNN’s Laura Coates whether he would respect the jury’s verdict.
“No, I don’t think so,” he replied. He told CNN he thinks “some of it is the jury’s fault,” but he places the blame primarily on Bragg and Marchand.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, wrote to X after the verdict that the New York trial was a “sham” and a “total travesty of justice.”
“This is all politics,” he said.
A few Republicans toed the party line, but they faced swift backlash from Trump’s allies.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a frequent critic of Trump and who also voted guilty at his second impeachment trial in 2021, said Friday that her conviction in the hush-money criminal trial and other legal issues make her ineligible to run against Biden.
“These disruptions have distracted from the Biden team and shifted the focus from Biden’s inexcusable record and the damage his policies have done to Alaska and our economy to Trump’s legal drama,” Murkowski said on X.
Murkowski did not comment on the ruling other than to say it was a “first step in the legal process” and that she expected Trump to appeal.
And when former Maryland governor and current Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan called on “all Americans to respect the courts and the legal process,” Trump’s top adviser Chris LaCivita responded bluntly about X.
“You just finished campaigning,” he told the former governor.
Marianna Sotomayor and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
Fixes
An earlier version of this article misstated Lara Trump’s title. She is co-chair of the Republican National Committee, not co-chair of the Republican Party. The article has been corrected.
