The unprecedented indictment of former President Trump, viewed by most people as a politically motivated case meant to derail the top 2024 Republican White House candidate, is already prompting calls to step up investigations of President Biden and his family.
Republicans and legal experts say Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Mr. Trump has permanently degraded the judicial system and opened the doors to more politically motivated criminal cases.
“This only invites more prosecutions of political enemies,” Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group, told The Washington Times. “Democrats have crossed the Rubicon on this type of political prosecution, and it’s simply not a door that can be shut in this age of revenge politics.”
As Mr. Trump now faces up to 136 years in prison for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid in 2016, Republicans are calling for GOP investigators to ramp up their probe of the Biden family’s lucrative foreign business deals and Mr. Biden’s potential involvement in the schemes.
The House Oversight and Accountability panel is already combing Treasury Department records to track down the bank account information for President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, his brother, James Biden and several business associates who raked in millions of dollars from foreign business deals that some believe involved illegal influence peddling.
“Republicans will inevitably investigate the Biden crime family even more in the coming days, and there’s no telling what can come of that,” Mr. Davis said.
The ramped-up legal scrutiny of Mr. Trump and the congressional probe of Mr. Biden’s family is taking place as both men appear poised to face off in the 2024 presidential race. Mr. Trump holds a double-digit lead over all of his GOP opponents in recent Republican primary polling, and Mr. Biden is expected to announce by the end of the year that he is running for a second term.
George Mason University law professor Eugene Kontorovich said the charges against Mr. Trump will normalize the criminal targeting of the nation’s top leaders, including Mr. Biden. He predicted Barack Obama will be the last U.S. president not to be indicted after leaving office.
“No former president has ever been indicted not because all of America’s leaders have been so clean there were no conceivable charges against them,” Mr. Kontorovich told The Times. “Rather, it has been an exercise of discretion to avoid politicizing the justice system. Once that norm has been breached, it is impossible to limit the impact to Donald Trump. Republican prosecutors will naturally see Democratic candidates as fair game.”
Republicans in Congress are already striking back against Mr. Bragg, a liberal, elected district attorney who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Mr. Trump.
The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee responded swiftly to the Trump indictment, issuing a subpoena to Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Mr. Bragg’s office who helped bring about the hush-money probe of Mr. Trump and then wrote a book about it.
“Congress has a specific and manifestly important interest in preventing politically motivated prosecution of current and former presidents by elected state and local prosecutors,” Mr. Jordan wrote in a cover letter accompanying the subpoena. “If state or local prosecutors are able to engage in politically motivated prosecutions of Presidents of the United States (current or former) for personal acts, this could have a profound impact on how presidents choose to exercise their powers in office.”
Mr. Bragg defended the case against Mr. Trump.
“This is the business capital of the world,” Mr. Bragg said Tuesday after Mr. Trump was arraigned and fingerprinted in a New York City courthouse. “We regularly have cases involving false business statements. The bedrock of the basis for business integrity and a well-functioning business marketplace is accurate record-keeping.”
Mr. Bragg charged that the books were cooked to conceal payouts to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Mr. Trump: $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal and $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Another $30,000 payoff went to a former Trump Tower doorman who was peddling a story that Mr. Trump had a child out of wedlock.
Mr. Trump has denied the affairs and the purported love child.
Polls show most people view the charges against Mr. Trump as politically motivated and the move to indict the former president left legal experts fearful it will politicize the judicial system.
The charges have surpassed the statute of limitation and Mr. Trump’s actions did not merit any charges when reviewed by the Justice Department years ago.
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS found 76% of Americans believed the indictment was motivated at least partly by politics, while 52% said they believed politics played a major role in the decision to indict the former president. The poll found that 60% of Americans approved of the indictment nonetheless.
Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz ridiculed Mr. Bragg’s charges as “made up” and “absurd.” He said the case will damage the legal system and threaten politicians in both parties.
“There will be, tragically, tit-for-tat retribution,” Mr. Dershowitz told the Times “A terrible cycle of injustice has begun.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.