Mona Charen: “The indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is risky, but nothing about it undermines the rule of law. The risks are political and prudential. The Republicans, by contrast, are chest-deep in contempt for law.”
“We saw one political risk of Bragg’s indictment play out even before anyone had read the charges. Call it the Rally Round the Criminal effect. It has been evident for some time that Republicans thrill to imagined persecution. After the completely justified, arguably essential, search of Mar-a-Lago for stolen top secret documents, the GOP sprang to Trump’s defense in Pavlovian fashion. It wasn’t just that their knees jerked; it was the language they adopted, dipping autonomically into the extremist/incendiary vocabulary they’ve learned at Trump’s knee. It was ‘defund the FBI’ (per Marjorie Taylor Greene), and ‘impeach Merrick Garland’ (per Josh Hawley), and eliminate the ‘brownshirts of the FBI” (per Paul Gosar).”
