Many Republicans are speaking out against the impeachment of former President Donald Trump — including some of his most vocal critics — but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is not among them.
Prominent Republican leaders and top deputies have remained silent for nearly a week after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the unprecedented criminal indictment against the former president.
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to porn stars ahead of the 2016 presidential election, which prosecutors said was part of an illegal “scheme” to deceive voters. He pleaded not guilty in a dramatic court appearance on Tuesday.
Trump allies have dismissed the indictment as politically motivated and questioned the legal theory behind the case. Even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of the biggest GOP critics of Trump who does not think he belongs in public office, said Bragg “has been stretched to achieve criminal charges of crime to fit the political agenda.”
“The prosecutor’s overreach sets a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and undermines the public’s faith in our justice system,” Romney added.
Bragg stated that the basic crimes behind false business records include violating state and federal election laws and making unauthorized false statements related to business and tax laws. His case faces some potential pitfalls, however.
Although McConnell has yet to weigh in on the indictment, he has not been silent. On Tuesday, when Trump was about to turn himself in to law enforcement for trial at a New York City courthouse, the Kentucky Republican let loose statement in other big news this week, applauding Finland’s accession to NATO after Russia’s bloody war in Ukraine.
McConnell typically avoids weighing in on news involving the former president without being asked first. Congress is currently in a two-week recess, and McConnell is still recovering from a fall last month.
Last year, McConnell took an implicit dig at Trump when he said that “anyone” would have a “difficult time” running for president if they believed that part of the US Constitution should be repealed because of false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He also criticized Fox News last month. March on misleading coverage of the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol, with rebuke from Trump and prominent conservative cable networks.
After voting not to impeach Trump in the Senate’s second impeachment trial, McConnell delivered a speech calling for “moral responsibility” for the January 6 attack on Congress and suggested that the former president could still face criminal charges for his actions.
“President Trump is still responsible for everything he did when he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run, he is still responsible for everything he did while in office, he hasn’t gotten anything – yet,” McConnell said at the time.
“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have a civil court. And the former president is not immune from responsibility either,” he said.
In another legal setback for Trump, a federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked an attempt to prevent a former top aide from testifying about himself to a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost. Some legal experts believe that the case — as well as other cases related to Trump’s handling of classified information — presents a more dangerous threat to Trump’s freedom than the quiet money case in New York.