Some Republican senators are pumping the brakes on attempts by former President Trump and his allies to villainize the FBI and Department of Justice in the wake of a 37-count indictment against the former president.
Trump’s attacks on the FBI are becoming a dividing line in the GOP, just as his claims of widespread election fraud developed into a major fault line within the party in the 2022 midterm election.
Trump has ramped up his rhetoric targeting the Justice Department so aggressively that some lawmakers fear it could provoke violence. As a result, some are urging fellow Republicans to tone down their rhetoric.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said House Republicans who make statements with violent overtones are acting irresponsibly.
“They’re irresponsible to say that. There’s no violent solution to this problem,” Graham said.
Graham tried to talk down Trump allies who are comparing the federal indictment of the former president to an act of war by pointing out that Trump will have fair representation in court.
“We have a legal system. He’ll be represented, there will be appeals, this will go all the way to the Supreme Court,” he said. “There’s a belief on the Republican side that the law doesn’t apply equally to Republicans and Democrats, but that’s no reason to engage in violent activity.”
Graham made his comments to reporters after Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) tweeted: “We have reached a new war phase” and vowed “an eye for an eye.”
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) made several tactical military references in a tweet after news of the indictment broke last week.
“This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock stead calm. That is all,” he said, using an acronym to denote the “real president of the United States.”
The military uses maps on a scale of 1:50,000, and bridges are strategic points in combat operations.
Some Republican senators fear that echoing Trump’s attacks on federal law enforcement will further polarize the nation and alienate moderate and swing voters, just as Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen turned off many voters last year.
“It was not too many years ago when the big cry [among Democrats] was, ‘Defund the police,’ and Republicans were saying, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Now, the Republicans are saying defund the Department of Justice, defund the FBI. What are we doing people? Yes, I’m worried,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
“We can’t get to a place where justice is in the eye of the beholder, that only if it works for me that justice is fair,” she said. “We need to believe in the integrity of our institutions and unfortunately this rhetoric does nothing to uphold the integrity and credibility [of the justice system].”
An ABC News/Ipsos poll of 910 adults nationwide conducted June 9-10 found that 63 percent of independents think the charges against Trump are “serious.” Forty-five percent of independents said Trump should be charged with a crime, while 33 percent said he should not be charged.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) on Thursday waved away calls by some Republicans to cut Justice Department and FBI funding in response to Trump’s indictment.
“You have to understand, we need a Justice Department,” he told reporters outside the Capitol.
Thune said Justice Department officials need to respond to requests for information from members of Congress but flatly rejected the idea floated by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in April to cut its funding.
“Are we going to get rid of the Justice Department? No. I think defunding is a really bad idea,” Thune said.
Thune explained away some of the incendiary rhetoric coming from some GOP lawmakers as political posturing and defended special counsel Jack Smith as a prosecutor with “a job to do.”
“The important thing for them to demonstrate is that they can apply an equal standard of justice across the board for all,” he said of federal prosecutors. “They’ve brought these charges now — or the grand jury has — so we need to let that process play out.”
Hours after being arraigned in Miami, Trump told a crowd of supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., that Smith is “a raging and uncontrolled Trump-hater, as is his wife.”
Some Senate Democrats are warning that Trump could stoke a violent response such as he did on Jan. 6, 2021, when he urged supporters to “fight like hell” before they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.
“When I was a prosecutor and I tried cases, the standard defense was to attack the prosecutor, to denigrate the FBI and to challenge the motives of the government. It’s a distraction. In this instance, it’s a very dangerous distraction because it degrades and undercuts the public’s trust in our law enforcement institutions, because it’s coming not from a criminal defendant but from elected officials. I think it’s abhorrent,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former U.S. attorney.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said lawmakers can’t rule out the possibility that Trump’s rhetoric could incite violence.
“Having lived through Jan. 6, you cannot dismiss the possibility, but I hope that cooler heads will prevail on both sides of the aisle,” he said.
Many Republican senators have stayed quiet about Trump’s indictment on 37 federal charges, including violations of the Espionage Act and conspiring to obstruct justice.
But some high-profile Republicans have rallied to his defense by accusing the Justice Department of waging a politically motivated prosecution.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told Fox News host Sean Hannity that President Biden has “mishandled classified documents in a much more severe manner than Donald Trump ever mishandled classified documents,” alleging there “is a pattern of the FBI not investigating anything with respect to Biden.”
He later tweeted, “there is a two-tier system of justice in this country,” a talking point that other Republicans have used.
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said last week that the indictment looked like “an unequal application of justice” and said it “feels political, and it’s rotten.”
A key distinction between Biden’s and Trump’s possession of classified documents is that Biden pledged to cooperate with the Department of Justice and immediately returned classified documents to the country, while the federal indictment of Trump alleges that he sought to obstruct the FBI’s effort to retrieve secret materials.