When last summer the FBI showed up at Mar-a-Lago, the private club in South Florida that he owns and where the former president lives donald trumpand seized dozens of confidential documents taken from the White House, the Republican flower and cream came out in defense of the ex-president.
This Tuesday, the day after a House committee suggested to the Justice Department the impeachment of trump For supporting the failed coup on January 6, 2021, top Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal reference, while others offered low-key, if any, defenses.
This gives an idea of how much, more and more, the Republican barons are turning away from the ex-president as one who is fleeing from nuclear contamination.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called for “an immediate and full explanation” after the FBI executed the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago. But on Monday, he told reporters that he had only one “immediate observation” about the criminal referral: “The entire nation knows who was responsible that day.”
Senator Josh Hawley, who called for the immediate resignation of Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of the search, remained silent on the committee’s findings, focusing instead on alleged FBI missteps.
In turn, Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic who suggested the former president had likely benefited, at least politically, from the FBI’s summer manhunt, said he was at least partly responsible for the attack. Deadly at the Capitol.
“No man is above the law,” Hogan told the agency. PA even shortly before the committee vote.
In political terms, the divergent responses are a sign of how quickly the political landscape has changed for Trump, as he faces a new legal threat and makes a third run for president. It’s a marked change for a party that has been defined, above all, by its unquestioning loyalty to Trump under any circumstances for the past six years.
As explained to OnCuba a Republican lawyer from Miami, who wanted to remain anonymous, the matter may be compounded because, if the Department of Justice begins the investigation and accuses him of something before the start of the registration period as a candidate for the presidency next year, Trump you could be prevented from applying officially. Unofficially, the former president has expressed his willingness to run.
Monday’s hearing of the Jan. 6 House committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans critical of Trump, likely marks the latest attempt by Congress to hold him accountable for the attack on the Capitol by hundreds of his loyalists, while Elected officials were working to certify the victory, in the 2020 presidential election, of Democrat Joe Biden.
The committee, which House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy boycotted and dismissed as a “sham process,” will be formally disbanded on Jan. 3 when Republicans seize majority control of the House.
Always defiant, Trump predicted that the committee’s conclusions, at the end of the day, would favor him. “These people don’t understand that when they persecute me, those who love freedom gather around me. It makes me stronger. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, ”he said in a statement he posted on his social network. He condemned the criminal investigation as “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”
This week’s vote comes just a month after Trump launched his campaign to return to the White House in 2024. The former president had hoped that his new status as a candidate could give him a new edge in his many legal entanglements, while avoiding potential Republican contenders in the primary.
We owe every single member of the January 6 Committee a thank you. No one is above the law, and the people who threaten our democracy must be held accountable. https://t.co/jvO4hAnLW7
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) December 19, 2022
Such hopes have not yet materialized. Early polls suggest the 76-year-old former president is unsure of winning the 2024 nomination as his Republican rivals prepare to run against him.
tax returns
Meanwhile, Trump is also preparing for the possible release of his tax returns, which he has tried to keep out of public view for years. The House Ways and Means Committee was considering the release of six years of Trump’s taxes, as well as those related to his business, Tuesday afternoon, although it was not clear when the documents might be available to the public. public.
However, Trump’s increased responsibility ahead of the upcoming presidential election may have little to do with his legal challenges. Republicans are increasingly concerned about his ability to win.
worries and setbacks
GOP concerns about Trump’s eligibility intensified after the November midterms, when Trump’s hand-picked candidates in several high-profile races were defeated. These setbacks were followed by the deepest Republican losses in the previous two national elections under Trump’s leadership.
In fact, the first few weeks of Trump’s third presidential campaign are going so badly that some of his allies are privately questioning whether he is serious about his 2024 ambitions.
Trump faced Republican demands that he apologize for his decision to invite prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dinner last month.
Days later, he horrified many by demanding the “cancellation” of parts of the Constitution to prop up his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. After that, his handpicked candidate in the Georgia Senate race, former football star Herschel Walker, lost the runoff.
