Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott were among more than two dozen GOP lawmakers who slammed the “show trial” of former President Donald Trump and its threat to constitutional protections for all Americans.
The group, led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, also accused the Biden administration of being “complicit in the destruction of due process” in a letter sent Thursday to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Not only that, they wrote, but Trump was convicted of a crime that still has not been defined more than two weeks after he was found guilty.
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“The conviction of President Trump in Manhattan is nothing short of the evisceration of the American judicial process,” the senators wrote of Trump being found guilty last month of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged effort to cover up an extramarital affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
“In their zeal to imprison Donald Trump, Democrat prosecutors successfully dissolved the constitutional protections afforded to defendants and the barriers that protect every American from the abuses of arbitrary rule.”
The “casualties” of this case include the concepts of due process, as guaranteed under the Fifth and 14th Amendments, as well as the Sixth Amendment right to be informed of the nature and cause of the allegation.
“Due process requires that a defendant be given notice, the opportunity to be heard, and a neutral decision-maker. Even if we disregard Judge Juan Merchan’s financial contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, the prosecutors were permitted to convert alleged time-lapsed business records misdemeanors into felonies because the records violations were supposedly in furtherance of a second crime,” they noted in the letter.
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“Yet, even after the jury rendered its verdict, we do not know what constitutes that specific second crime.”
“Due process cannot exist when the defendant is accused of a secret crime. No American – not even a President – can defend himself fairly in a court of law if he is deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to know what crime he is alleged to have committed,” the senators added.
Continuing, the lawmakers argued to Garland that the Biden Administration was “complicit in the destruction of due process of law.”
They argued that Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg had no jurisdiction to enforce federal election laws and that the U.S. government would never tolerate a state prosecutor infringing upon its jurisdiction in such cases.
That is, of course, unless the defendant is Trump, they added.
“Rather than call out prosecutors for carrying out the political persecution of Donald Trump, President Biden defended the case,” the senators wrote.
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“We condemn this show trial, not just because it marks the attempt to imprison a leader of the loyal opposition, but because it threatens the existence of due process of law, without which a constitutional republic dedicated to the protection of individual liberty is not possible,” the letter concluded.
Trump is expected to appeal the verdict. His sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just ahead of the Republican National Convention.
The senators who signed the letter in addition to Paul, Rubio and Scott included Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Roger Marshall (R-KS), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tim Scott (R-SC), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), James Lankford (R-OK), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), J.D. Vance (R-OH), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Budd (R-NC), John Thune (R-SD), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Katie Britt (R-AL), Mike Braun (R-IN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Hoeven (R-ND), Deb Fischer (R-NE), and Josh Hawley (R-MO).
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