Some echoed Trump’s argument that the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, was not impartial. Several claimed, without evidence, that the case presented in New York was an example of the Biden administration weaponizing the judicial system. Others blamed the jury saying they didn’t have confidence in the 12 Americans chosen to deliver the verdict in the case.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News on Sunday that the Republican Party would “fight back…with everything in our arsenal.”
He referenced how House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had issued requests for Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan, and for the top prosecutor to appear for a June 13 hearing for the House Select Judiciary. Federal Government Armament Subcommittee.
Although the Manhattan district attorney holds a local elected office, Johnson still tied the verdict to the Biden administration, suggesting without evidence that it was the result of a push by President Biden and federal Democrats to prosecute Trump.
“So what we will do with the tools that we have in Congress, in the House, is use our oversight responsibility,” Johnson said. The hearing will “investigate what these prosecutors are doing at the state and federal levels to use…political retribution in the judicial system to go after political opponents of federal officials like Donald Trump.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who for years had a bitter relationship with the former president but nevertheless supported him in March, also criticized the trial process. “These charges should never have been filed in the first place,” McConnell said on X on Thursday. “I hope the conviction is overturned on appeal.”
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, lashed out at Merchan during a Sunday morning interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying Merchan “should never have presided over the case” and that the entire the trial was a “waste of time”.
“This is not the United States of America,” she said. “This is the kind of thing you would expect to see in the communist USSR”
Laurence Tribe, an expert on constitutional law, called the attacks on the courts, combined with the broader attack on elections, “alarming.”
“They are all symptoms of a deepening disease, a disease of the social and political order, and they could easily pave the way for a dictatorship,” Tribe said in an interview.
Even several moderate Republicans came to the defense of the former president, including Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted to convict Trump on an impeachment charge for inciting an insurrection in 2021 and promised not to support his re-election.
“It is fundamental to our American justice system that the government prosecute cases because of alleged criminal conduct, regardless of who the defendant is. In this case the opposite happened,” Collins said in a statement. The senator specifically attacked Bragg, the district attorney, who she suggested “brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was, and not because of any specific criminal conduct.”
“The political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict will likely be the subject of a prolonged appeal process,” she said.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, similarly criticized the district attorney.
“Bragg should have resolved the case against Trump. …But he made a political decision,” Romney counted Atlantic writer and Romney biographer McKay Coppins. “Bragg may have won the battle for now, but he may have lost the political war. Democrats think they can put out Trump’s fire with oxygen. It’s political negligence.” (There were no publicly known plea discussions before the trial. However, Bragg could not have resolved the case unilaterally; Trump would have had to agree to any plea agreement.)
Gregg Nunziata, who leads the Society for the Rule of Law, said it’s fair to question whether this case was a good exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
Collins’ remarks, he added, “were critical of aspects of this particular prosecution, and did not attempt to cast doubt on 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 we look around the world and we look at democratic countries or formerly democratic countries that became authoritarian, one of the things that happened in each of those cases was a concerted attack on the independent judiciary,” Fogel said.
Many of Trump’s longtime allies have criticized the trial results and argued that the convictions will be to his advantage.
Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) compared the case to “fascism.”
“I think what happened in New York is shameful,” Vance told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday. “Throwing your political opponents in prison – thank God that only happened in New York and not in the rest of the country.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the former 2024 GOP presidential candidate seen as a possible vice presidential candidate for Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that the conviction will persuade Republican voters.
“There is no doubt that this verdict has truly brought about the unification of our party,” he said. “Without a doubt, what we’re seeing is Never Trumpers calling me and saying, ‘Tim, I’m on the bandwagon now. I’ve seen this two-tier justice system working against the president of the United States, it could work against me too.’”
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida), another Trump vice presidential candidate, was asked by CNN’s Laura Coates whether he respected the jury’s verdict.
“No, I don’t want to,” he replied. Although he told CNN that he believes the blame lies “in part with the jury,” he largely blamed Bragg and Merchan.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, wrote in X after the verdict that the New York trial was a “sham” and “an absolute travesty of justice.”
“This was ALL politics,” he said.
There were some Republicans who went against the party line — and encountered swift backlash from Trump’s allies.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a frequent Trump critic who also voted in 2021 to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, said Friday that the guilty verdict in his silence criminal trial — and his others legal problems – made him a flawed challenger against Biden.
“These distractions gave the Biden campaign a fighting chance, as the focus shifted from Biden’s indefensible record and the damage his policies have done to Alaska and our nation’s economy, to Trump’s legal drama,” Murkowski said on X .
Murkowski had no comment on the verdict other than to say it is the “first step in the legal process” and that she hopes Trump appeals.
And when former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, now the Republican candidate for Maryland’s Senate seat, urged “all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process,” Trump’s top adviser Chris LaCivita had a blunt response about X.
“You just ended your campaign,” he told the former governor.
Marianna Sotomayor and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
correction
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.
