OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Conservatives angered by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump are saying that Democrats who have cheered on the prosecution have mistakenly opened the door to future prosections of other presidents, including Joe Biden.
“All bets are off. You can expect grand jury indictments of leftist politicians like [President] Biden, [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer as surely as night follows day,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, told the New York Post.
“You can be sure that there are prosecutors across Florida and Texas right now who are looking for a state law hook into the Biden family,” he added. “And if they’re not, they’re not doing their jobs.”
The First TV’s Jesse Kelly took a similar position on Twitter Friday.
“Alvin Bragg is not the end. Alvin Bragg is just the beginning of where we’re going. If you understood that, you’d stop saying things like ‘This can’t happen in America.’ You’d be demanding a GOP AG respond in kind. And respond right now. Nothing else stops this,” he wrote.
Alvin Bragg is not the end. Alvin Bragg is just the beginning of where we’re going. If you understood that, you’d stop saying things like “This can’t happen in America.”
You’d be demanding a GOP AG respond in kind. And respond right now. Nothing else stops this.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) March 31, 2023
Trump is the first sitting or former president to be indicted, but thanks to the precedent set by Democrats, he’s not liable to be the last.
“Republicans need to learn how to take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and break glass jaws — politically and legally, not physically,” Mike Davis, a former chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and president of the Article III Project, said in remarks to The Post.
“If New York can turn a routine settlement of a business dispute seven years ago into a felony, I think our Republican AGs and DAs should get creative,” Davis, who briefly worked as a federal prosecutor before he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, added. “Two wrongs don’t make it right, but it makes it even.”
He continued: “You just need probable cause. A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. We just saw that in New York. And the Bidens actually committed real crimes. These are real crimes that the Bidens committed. There is smoking gun evidence that the Bidens were corruptly and illegally on Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs’ payrolls.”
Both Democrats and Republicans recognized the likely fallout from the charges against Trump, which represents a significant shift in US legal norms, The Post noted.
“The Republicans will be furiously seeking revenge and may try to pin Biden with something,” left-wing social commentator Noam Chomsky, 94, a professor emeritus at MIT, predicted, though he said some charges like war crimes would not become partisan.
Joe Arpaio, a supporter of Trump and the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., who the former president pardoned in a criminal contempt case in 2017, said that he believes there is a double standard in the legal system against Republicans.
“The criminal justice system is not always fair, believe me, and this is an example,” Arpaio he told The Post.
“This sets a little precedent,” he added. “Now the word is out that you can go and indict an ex-president and a current president, and they opened another door. But now everybody’s going to flex their muscles and use this case. So now we’re gonna threaten all presidents or ex-presidents.”
Arpaio said that prosecutors would not bring a case against any president or ex-president “unless his name is Donald Trump.” He also claimed that there could be enough evidence to charge President Biden or former President Obama, The Post added.
Davis, who supervised federal judicial and prosecutor nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2019, presented detailed proposals for a potential Biden prosecution.
“I understand the Bidens may have had some oil and gas deals that deal with Texas. I think maybe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton should start looking at this long and hard … and Louisiana with [Republican state Attorney General Jeff] Landry,” he told the outlet.
“Paxton and Landry, they need to look at this,” he added. “And if you can find a conspiracy and any of the overt acts of a conspiracy are committed in any of those states, you can bring charges.”
Trump is expected to be arraigned in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.
