House Majority Leader Steve Scalise predicted some Democrats will vote for former President Donald Trump in November because they’re “disgusted” with how the presumptive Republican nominee is being treated in the justice system.
Mr. Trump is currently awaiting a verdict in New York, where a jury is in its second day of deliberations over whether he is guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Scalise, in an appearance Thursday on Fox Business, said most Americans disagree with Mr. Trump’s treatment in that trial, as well as other cases being brought against him by federal and Georgia prosecutors.
“I think a lot of people that maybe weren’t going to vote for President Trump are looking and saying, wait a minute, I need to give this guy a second look because I don’t like what the Democrat Party is doing, from the president of the United States to Democrat DAs who ran on a platform not of putting criminals away, but of just going to find something on Donald Trump,” the Louisiana Republican said.
Mr. Scalise said Mr. Trump’s rally last week in the Bronx and another two weeks ago on the Jersey Shore demonstrate that he’s winning support in typically liberal strongholds, attributing that in part to the ongoing judicial proceedings against him.
“I think there are a lot of Democrats across the country that don’t agree with this and are going to be voting for Donald Trump,” he said.
Mr. Scalise, the No. 2 in House leadership, is just one of many Republican lawmakers who have come to Mr. Trump’s defense in the hush money trial. Some have even traveled to the courthouse to make public statements on the former president’s behalf. But Mr. Scalise took issue with the Biden campaign doing the same this week when they dispatched surrogates to speak outside the Manhattan courthouse.
“You’ve got the Democrat Party, literally with President Biden’s campaign, rolling out an old washed-up actor Robert De Niro to try to intimidate the jury into getting a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts,” Mr. Scalise said. “They never presented any facts, and yet they don’t care. They really don’t.”
Mr. Scalise also attacked the prosecution’s key witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, calling him “a serial liar” and “convicted perjurer.”
And he accused Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, of being biased against Mr. Trump, saying his daughter, who heads a campaign firm that does work for Democratic candidates, is “making millions of dollars off of this trial.”
“You saw the instructions the judge gave to the jury,” he said. “Basically, you don’t have to be unanimous. Just anything you want to do, just find a way to put this guy away because we don’t like him.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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