Kicking the courts is cheap politics

Bill Cotterell
| Capitol Column

In an era when Congress was taken seriously, threats to disrupt government policy or punish states and federal agencies for doing their jobs were big news.

Now furious warnings of partisan retaliation over former President Donald Trump’s 34-felony conviction are rightly seen as a predictable election-year drag on the part of Republicans looking to curry favor with one another in a show of puppy-dog devotion to their soon-to-be-deceased party. be a candidate for the White House. Fortunately for the country, Trump and his Republican Party sycophants can only threaten political retaliation – at least at this stage.

Perhaps they will be able to implement some of these income equalization plans after the January inauguration.

For now, it is politically expedient for Trump’s allies to thunder from the pulpits of the House and Senate press rooms about a “rigged” system. However, this is not good for the judiciary, which needs the public’s trust that everyone is equal before the law.

Shortly after the New York jury issued a verdict in the Trump case, a dozen US senators – Republicans, of course – vowed political revenge. They said they would effectively stop congressional action on almost any important issue. Not that Congress has accomplished much yet.

“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally changed our policies in an un-American way. As a conference of Senate Republicans, we do not want to assist the White House in its project of tearing the country apart,” eight senators wrote to the White House. Within a few days, several more joined the protest.

“To this end, we will not: 1) authorize any increases in non-security funding for this administration or any budget bills funding guerrilla activities; 2) vote to confirm this administration’s political and judicial appointments; and 3) allowing expedited consideration and passage of Democratic legislation or bodies that are not essential to the security of the American people,” the letter continued.

Members signing on to the threat included Republican Florida senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

On the other side of the Capitol, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called Trump’s conviction an emergency and said the U.S. Supreme Court should intervene by granting him some sort of clemency. This would certainly be a novel approach to appellate law – why wait for Trump’s petition to work its way through the lower courts when the justices could just reach in and take on the petition because this guy is special.

And it doesn’t matter that the inscription “Equality before the law” appeared above the portico of the Supreme Court.

One Florida lawmaker proposed banning state employees from traveling to the Big Apple for business purposes as an economic boycott to show the Yankees that they cannot treat Palm Beach County’s most famous resident this way. At least there would be some wrong precedent on this matter. A few years ago, California ordered its state employees to stay away from Florida due to certain laws that Governor Ron DeSantis signed.

Even Democrat U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota got involved. He called New York Governor Kathy Hochul to stop the whole thing and pardon Trump. Phillips, who briefly challenged President Joe Biden in this year’s primary because he believed the president would lose to Trump, had a solid out-of-court justification for his idea – that if Trump looks like a martyr, it helps him win.

Hey, maybe both sides should preemptively pardon. New York could release Trump and the feds would drop charges against Hunter Biden. The two trials have some similarities in that neither man would appear in court if it weren’t for his famous name, and no one ever goes to trial for what they did. (A federal jury convicted Hunter Biden on weapons charges last week.)

Taking the GOP senators’ letter seriously is like tying your shoe while walking. It can probably be done if you’re willing to take a ridiculous stance and achieve next to nothing.

Scot is considered the next leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, and Rubio could be on Trump’s list of vice presidents, both of whom graduated from law school. But they might actually think that the White House was “mocking the rule of law” in the Trump case. Still, there is no evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement – other than Trump claiming so.

When it comes to blocking judicial nominations or major legislation, Congress’ summer recess and political conventions are not far away. So there won’t be many important issues to deal with before the elections.

Of course, Trump’s trials are political. So was the trial of Hunter Biden and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, who faced different charges. These are political people, and politics colors everything they do, everything that is done to them.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter with United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He writes a weekly column for The News Service of Florida and City & State Florida. He can be reached at [email protected].

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