The Biden campaign, on Trump: “Today in New York we have seen that no one is above the law”

For the president of the United States, Joe Biden, the jury’s ruling that declared his predecessor, Donald Trump, guilty of 34 crimes, has caught him in Delaware, where he had gone for the anniversary of the death of his son Beau. Biden has carefully measured his reaction. Shortly after the jury’s ruling was announced, he tweeted: “There is only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the polls,” without making any reference to the trial. The White House has also avoided an immediate official reaction and has let the Biden campaign speak out: “Today in New York we have seen that no one is above the law,” he said in a statement.

“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed that he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the polls,” says the campaign statement, which reiterates the message tweeted by the president.

“Convicted or not, Trump will be the Republican candidate for president. The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater. He is waging an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, vowing to be a dictator ‘on day one’ and calling for our Constitution to be ‘terminated’ so he can regain and maintain power. A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away American freedoms and fomenting political violence, and the American people will reject him this November,” the statement concludes.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have closed ranks with their leader and have embraced the thesis of political persecution, starting with the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. “President Trump has never stopped fighting for the American people, even when he has faced the wrath of an armed judicial system and a witch hunt sham impeachment,” he has tweeted. In a statement, he called this Thursday “a shameful day in the history of the United States” (in this he agrees with the Democrats, although for opposite reasons) and has described the case as a “purely political exercise, not a legal one.”

Outside the court where Trump has been tried has witnessed a parade of congressmen and Republican politicians who have come during the trial to show their support for the former president. Among those who have gone to New York are Johnson himself and also Vivek Ramaswamy, who competed with Trump in the primaries, but later expressed his aspirations to accompany him as a vice presidential candidate. Ramaswamy has added to the message: “Today, the United States has suffered a defeat. Corruption reigned supreme. Justice was brutally betrayed. “Biden’s Justice Department emerged victorious, a stark reminder of the sinister forces at play,” he has written.

Virtually all the main personalities of the Republican Party have signed similar messages of support for the former president in which they consider that the trial has been unfair and that the jury’s ruling is the result of unfair persecution. The verdict is part of a “campaign to weaponize the judicial system to attack President Trump,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.

Whatley has repeated the words that Trump spoke when leaving the court after hearing the ruling. “The real verdict,” Whatley said, “will come on November 5,” the date of the presidential election.

Ohio Senator JD Vance has said that the verdict was a “disgrace to the judicial system.” For his part, Representative Steve Scalise, the second highest-ranking Republican in the House, has stated that the decision was “a defeat for Americans who believe in the fundamental legal principle that justice is blind.”

The governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was Donald Trump’s press secretary in the White House and has been considered a potential candidate to be a vice presidential candidate, has spoken along the same lines. Shortly after the verdict she called the process a “politically motivated sham trial.” “The American people decide our elections. Donald Trump will be our next president,” she tweeted.

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan somewhat distanced himself from this generalized position, although he published his tweet before the verdict was known: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this time of dangerous division in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not add fuel to the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law,” he wrote.

On the other side, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives was cautious in his first reaction: “The United States is a nation built on the rule of law. The jury has spoken and has carefully rendered a decision. “Responsible leadership demands that the verdict be respected,” he tweeted.

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