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After former President Donald Trump’s public speculation that he’ll be arrested Tuesday in a hush money scheme, Republicans showed they have embraced a dubious strategy seemingly intent on helping Trump and others elude accountability.
The Trump protection racket is in effect.
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On Saturday morning, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy referred to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who would lead a potential Trump indictment in New York — as a “radical DA who lets violent criminals walk.”
That’s rich coming from McCarthy, whose Bakersfield-area district in California records more violent crime than many major U.S. cities. The issue of crime and corruption in Bakersfield is so bad that it was the subject of a Hulu docuseries produced by Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback turned activist. And as my colleague Hayes Brown explained well Saturday: McCarthy and federal officials barely have any power to influence local prosecutors. The House speaker would do well to read a handbook on his legislative powers. Maybe he missed orientation.
Nonetheless, McCarthy wasn’t alone in the attempted deflection.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana joined McCarthy, falsely claiming that Bragg “refuses to prosecute violent criminals” and whining that the DA is engaged in a “political vendetta” against Trump.
Former Vice President (and White House whipping boy) Mike Pence sounded a similar note.
“At a time when there’s a crime wave in New York City, the fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting President Trump is his top priority ... just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” Pence said in a Sunday interview.
The claims about Bragg resemble allegations from Republicans in Georgia, where legislators have taken steps that could hamstring prosecutors who don’t pursue investigations that align with GOP wishes. One bill would make it easier to recall district attorneys such as Fulton County’s Fani Willis, who is investigating Trump’s pressure effort to overturn the Georgia results of the 2020 presidential election, and another would create a state commission with the power to remove a local prosecutor.
As for Trump, he has made clear that his plan is to use dubious claims to undermine the prosecutors who pose a threat to him.
Over the weekend, he doubled down on a baseless claim he has made previously, saying Bragg is racist. It’s a claim Trump has made before about Bragg and other Black prosecutors — such as Willis and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
All of this tells you everything you need to know about the Republican Party’s pro-Trump protection racket. When they don’t like how the game is going, they attack the referees.