At a campaign rally in Iowa in 2016, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said the following:
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
That theory, said in typical Trump bravado about his loyal supporters, is now getting a real-time test.
No, he did not shoot anybody. But Trump does face felony charges of falsifying business records. And Trump may soon face allegations about obstruction of justice over how he handled presidential records, as well as his alleged interference with the 2020 presidential balloting in Georgia.
That said, who might be Trump fan boy No. 1? None other than House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The Bakersfield Republican worked Tuesday to deflect any focus on the fraud case brought in New York. Instead, McCarthy made the district attorney who filed the charges the issue.
“Alvin Bragg is attempting to interfere in our democratic process by invoking federal law to bring politicized charges against President Trump,” McCarthy said in the start of a Twitter post made a short while after Trump was arraigned in state court.
McCarthy ends his posting with this threat:
“Bragg’s weaponization of the federal justice process will be held accountable by Congress.”
The words used by McCarthy are important. As House speaker, he is behind only the vice president in the line of succession to the presidency. He is also the House’s top Republican, and those members take their clues from him.
Let’s analyze his tweet:
— “Alvin Bragg is attempting to interfere in our democratic process...”
Actually, Bragg is upholding democracy by showing that no citizen — from the average person to a former president of the United States — is above the law.
Bragg made it clear in his news conference after Trump’s arraignment that this is a case involving the white-collar crime of fraud, which the Manhattan district attorney gets a lot of practice prosecuting, given it is the nation’s financial center. That office knows fraud when it sees it.
— “... by invoking federal law to bring politicized charges against President Trump...”
The possibility of Trump working to undermine election integrity should matter to voters across the political spectrum. If he tried to cover up an affair with a porn star to better his chances with voters — and paid that actor $130,000 to keep quiet — that bears legal scrutiny.
— “... while at the same time arguing that the peoples’ representatives in Congress lack jurisdiction to investigate this farce.”
There are instances when the federal government can supersede a state agency, like when civil rights are being violated. But there is no role for Congress in a local criminal prosecution. McCarthy knows better.
— “Bragg’s weaponization of the federal justice process will be held accountable by Congress.”
The speaker’s powerful role in U.S. government is clear. Bragg is a local prosecutor. Who really is doing the weaponizing right now?
What McCarthy should do
One wonders if McCarthy and the other outspoken Trump backers in the House — Ohio’s Jim Jordan, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Florida’s Matt Gaetz — could ever see anything possibly wrong in Trump. If he really did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and got arrested, would they say it was a political prosecution? One wonders.
The bottom line is this: Bragg is a local prosecutor trying a fraud case; the defendant happens to be the former president. Bragg plans to treat Trump like any other suspect of white-collar crime, as well he should.
McCarthy and the other Trump acolytes in the House are just venting their “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” They have not seen the evidence. They have not interviewed the witnesses. They are not on the prosecution team.
There is a word for those who would bend elections to their personal will: Dictator. Example: Vladimir Putin. Interesting how Trump was fascinated by the Russian leader.
It would have been so much simpler for Bragg not to bring this case. Just ignore it, move on to the next no-name suspect. But he is trying to uphold the law and do the right thing.
