In our legal system, every defendant is entitled the presumption of innocence, and Donald Trump is no different. Prosecutors have indicted him twice — a number that appears likely to grow — but the former president will have an opportunity to present a defense, and it will be up to his accusers to try to prove his guilt.
But given what we now know, I don’t envy Trump’s defense attorneys. The new, superseding indictment in the Republican’s classified documents case is quite devastating, and includes previously unseen details about an apparent cover-up in which the former president allegedly conspired with aides to destroy evidence.
It was against this backdrop that I saw a headline published by The Hill that read, “Hawley on new Trump indictment: ‘We cannot allow this to stand.’”
For a fleeting moment, I was tempted to see this as a refreshing change of pace. Perhaps Josh Hawley, a Yale-trained attorney and former state attorney general, had finally seen enough. After reviewing the unsealed indictment, perhaps the Missouri Republican had come to the conclusion that Republicans “cannot allow” Trump to get away with alleged misconduct this serious.
Of course, that’s not what Hawley meant. From The Hill’s report:
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) slammed the new charges brought against former President Trump in the case over his handling of classified documents Thursday, arguing that “we cannot allow this to stand.” … “It’s so brazen right now, what they’re doing,” Hawley said on Fox News. “It is really a subversion of the rule of law. I mean, they’re taking the rule of law, turning it on its head, and we cannot allow this to stand.”
I found myself stuck on Hawley’s use of words “we” and “this.”
What the GOP senator was referring to was a lengthy process in which law enforcement professionals methodically collected evidence of wrongdoing against a private citizen who appears to have committed a series of felonies. “We cannot allow this to stand”? Evidently, the senator was referring to Republicans who can’t tolerate prosecutors filing an indictment, simply because they uncovered evidence of crimes.
Around the same time, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik responded to the details of the new Trump indictment by claiming that it’s proof that the United States’ system of justice “is broken” and our republic “is in peril.”
Both GOP lawmakers said the new charges filed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office had something to do with Hunter Biden. This isn’t a situation in which Republicans such as Hawley and Stefanik assessed the indictment, reviewed the details of the charges, and came away unpersuaded. On the contrary, neither of these GOP lawmakers made even passing reference to the allegations themselves. The odds are good that they condemned the indictment without reading it — an increasingly common problem in GOP politics. The result is a frustrating discussion in which reality-based observers and Republicans defending Trump are effectively talking past one another, engaged in a conversation marked by a disconnect between the allegations and the defense. The former president’s critics are reviewing the latest developments and asking, “Can you believe the seriousness of these allegations?” to which GOP voices are responding, “Isn’t this a good time to change the subject to Hunter Biden?” It’s tempting to ask which part of the new indictment Republicans found unpersuasive, or what they’d expect prosecutors to do in response to the compiled evidence, but these are the sorts of question they have no use for. It’s not that Hawley and Stefanik are unmoved by the evidence against the former president, it’s that they consider the evidence irrelevant. These Republicans haven’t made the case for Trump’s innocence, so much as they’ve effectively said they don’t care whether he’s guilty.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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