I’d love to see what Wyoming’s top Republican officials planned to say if Donald Trump had been acquitted by a New York City jury last week, instead of becoming the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes.
Opinion
WyoFile reported that within minutes of the jury’s 34 separate guilty verdicts on charges Trump falsified business records, the state’s all-GOP congressional delegation individually condemned the jury’s action as a travesty of justice.
Surely Wyoming’s three federal lawmakers had backup statements ready to go if Trump somehow managed to come out on top in a trial he claimed was so “rigged” that “Mother Teresa couldn’t beat the charges.”
Why are Republican politicians so willing to repeat Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and that Democrats are teeing up to do it again? What are they afraid Trump will do to them if they stand up for democracy?
In the recently completed New York trial, Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment he made to a porn star to keep her account of having sex with him in 2006 from being published. It was part of a scheme he orchestrated to keep voters from finding out about the alleged encounter during his 2016 presidential campaign, which could have seriously hurt his chances.
In the three remaining criminal trials, Trump has been indicted for such serious charges as conspiracy to defraud the federal government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding at the U.S. Capitol; unlawfully conspired to change the Georgia election outcome; and violated the Espionage Act by storing dozens of classified documents at his Florida resort after he left office.
This is the guy Wyoming’s top officials will defend no matter how it impacts their own reputations? Even if crossing Trump shattered their political careers, why risk going down in history tied to the most corrupt president we’ve ever had?
Even if he’d been acquitted in this first criminal trial, we still would have heard Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Harriet Hageman tee off about the Democrats’ alleged “weaponization” of the criminal justice system. But they would be singing the praises of the jury for having the courage and intelligence to recognize Trump’s innocence.
I guarantee our congressional delegation would have seized the opportunity to self-righteously defend the rule of law they have now thrown under the bus, and gloat about how confident they were that justice would triumph over evil.
Those words likely have all been deleted or shredded by now, so they’ll never see the light of day. We’re left to absorb the negative, ugly spin that poured out of the mouths of these whining, shameless Republican politicians who only care about not winding up on Trump’s “naughty” list.
Lummis posted on Facebook that the decision “does irreparable damage to Americans’ trust in our judicial system by undermining the Constitution for political gain.” Over on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, Barrasso wrote that fortunately “elections are decided in voting booths, not courtrooms.”
I expected Hageman to go to the mat for him with no holds barred. She owes her political career to Trump, after all, for endorsing her against his hated rival, former Rep. Liz Cheney. She didn’t disappoint.
Hageman perpetuated the explosive but false far-right narrative that Judge Juan Merchan gave “slanted jury instructions” that a unanimous verdict wouldn’t be necessary to convict Trump.
But she’s a lawyer, and Hageman knows exactly what the judge meant when he instructed jurors there were three possible “unlawful means” they could apply to Trump’s charges: falsifying other business records, breaking the Federal Election Campaign Act, or submitting false information on a tax return. For conviction, each juror would have to find that at least one of those three things happened, but they didn’t have to unanimously agree on which it was.
Yet Hageman still accused the judge of blatantly unethical conduct and planted that seed in the minds of Wyoming voters.
Gov. Mark Gordon, who’s been more judicious than our D.C. delegation in his support of Trump, still used the verdict to say he’s “extraordinarily disappointed that our justice system is being used so obviously in an attempt to influence our elections.” Without any evidence, he said the case has damaged Americans’ confidence in an impartial judiciary.
When it comes to the most bootlicking response of all Wyoming politicians, though, Secretary of State Chuck Gray wins hands down.
Gray didn’t get Trump’s blessing in his quickly abandoned effort to defeat Cheney in 2022, but he parlayed his never-ending loyalty to Trump into winning the second highest state office. He offered free screenings around the state of a discredited “documentary” about Trump haters stuffing ballot boxes for Biden.
“Today’s ‘verdict’ is absolutely bogus, disgusting, and a catastrophe to the legal system in America,” Gray said. “The Left has weopanized [sic] the legal system against President Donald J. Trump and the American people.”
Gray added what’s transpired is “a threat to the very foundations of our republic” and declared Trump “100% innocent.”
Not surprisingly, the single biggest whopper about Trump’s convictions came from the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
“We now have proof that the radical Democrats will do anything it takes to hold onto the reins of power,” the group wrote on Facebook. “Cooking up charges against your political opponent during an election cycle in which you are losing is unprecedented.”
What a classic case of projection! Of course, the group’s claim perfectly describes the Republican MAGA mob that Trump is accused of directing on Jan. 6, 2021, to storm the U.S. Capitol to stop confirmation of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The former president was indeed willing to do anything to subvert the will of the people.
Trump’s trial on four felony charges from the insurrection likely has no chance of being heard before the election, thanks to the conservative U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to consider — and slow-walk — Trump’s claim he has total immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump’s lawyer asserted his client could even order the military to stage a coup or kill a political rival.
No Wyoming GOP official called that dangerous or un-American. None of them has ever stood up to condemn Trump’s endless attacks on women, people of color, military veterans, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ and disabled people; nor his support of racists, Nazis, and dictators; or pardoning his criminal friends and vowing to lock up his enemies.
Trump is clearly their guy, no matter what he does. They don’t dare risk saying anything remotely critical, which could lead to Truth Social posts attacking their character, appearance and mental abilities, or even worse — endorsing their opponents.
Can’t some Wyoming Republican officeholders or candidates at least have the decency to acknowledge no one in America is above the law, and that Trump was given a fair trial by an impartial jury that spent weeks listening to the evidence?
Making tough decisions about a person’s innocence or guilt is a jury’s job. They sacrificed precious time from their own lives, family and work. They don’t deserve the ongoing attacks on their character by the defendant and his lawless supporters.
The jurors received praise from the judge for doing their civic duty. At the other end of the spectrum, they’ve had death threats and undoubtedly hope they will forever remain anonymous and unharmed.
It’s not too much to ask Wyoming’s political leaders to do what Trump refused to do: honor our criminal justice system, one of the hallmarks of democracy, and treat the judge, jury, attorneys and everyone involved in this historic case with respect. In fact, it’s the absolute least we should expect them to do.
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