From Election Denialism to Jury Denialism

The cult of Trump won't accept any judgment against him.

Guests wait for former U.S. president Donald Trump to speak during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 4, 2023. (Photo by Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images)

TO PROTECT DONALD TRUMP, the Republican party has turned against every institution that stood in his way: the press (“the enemy of the people”), the civil service (“the Deep State”), presidential elections (“rigged,” “stolen”), courts (for refusing to overturn the 2020 election), the House January 6th Committee (Democrats and “RINOs”), independent counsels (Robert Mueller, Robert Hur, Jack Smith), and law enforcement (for prosecuting the insurrectionists).

Now another institution is trying to hold Trump accountable. Last week, a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of 34 felonies in his hush-money trial. So Republican elected officials are doing what allegiance to their leader requires: They’re attacking the jury.

These attacks aren’t confined to the quirks of the case or the politics of Manhattan. Republicans are inventing reasons to reject any verdict against Trump. It’s an extension of what they’ve done since 2020: inventing reasons to reject any election Trump loses. Respecting juries, like respecting elections, is just another obsolete norm.

Let’s look at the party’s responses to the verdict.

1. Trump did nothing wrong.

The best argument against the Manhattan case is that Trump committed misdemeanors—falsifying business records to hide his hush-money payments—but that those charges shouldn’t have been inflated into felonies by portraying the hush money, in the context of the 2016 election, as a secondary crime. That argument would be similar to what Democrats said about President Bill Clinton’s perjury to cover up a sexual affair in the 1990s: that he behaved immorally and misled a court, but his misconduct shouldn’t have been inflated into articles of impeachment.

But that’s not what Trump and his party are saying about the Manhattan case. They’re denying that he committed any crimes or even that he had sex with Stormy Daniels.

“Nothing ever happened,” Trump asserted at a press conference after the verdict. In a Fox News interview, he repeated: “I did absolutely nothing wrong. I mean, absolutely.” Congressional Republicans agreed. “He’s an innocent man who did nothing wrong,” Sen. Tom Cotton insisted on Meet the Press. “@realDonaldTrump did nothing wrong,” tweeted Sen. Marsha Blackburn. “The man did nothing wrong,” said Rep. Byron Donalds. “The only thing that Donald Trump is guilty of is being in the courtroom of a political sham trial,” said Sen. J.D. Vance.

Anyone familiar with the evidence knows these denials are preposterous. Trump committed adultery with Daniels, paid for her silence to hide the tryst from voters, and—to cover up the coverup—disguised the payments in his business filings. Some of his conduct in the coverup implicated him in crimes. That’s why jurors, after hearing the evidence, convicted him.

Republicans can’t accept that facts decided the case. So they’ve set out to discredit the jury.

2. All the jurors were Trump haters.

This is the GOP’s main line of attack. “Twelve New Yorkers decided they were Democrat partisans,” Sen. Ted Cruz scoffed on his podcast, trying to explain away the verdict. Rep. Jim Jordan called the jurors “12 partisans” and vowed that “the real verdict will be on Nov. 5, when 330 million Americans get to weigh in,” not “12 people from Manhattan.” On CNN, Sen. Tim Scott said the jurors couldn’t be trusted because “96 percent of Manhattan are Democrats.” Rep. Nick Langworthy argued that bias in the jury pool invalidated the verdict: “This is a place where Donald Trump got five percent of the vote. There was no jury of his peers. It was a jury of his adversaries.” Hogan Gidley, Trump’s former campaign press secretary, told Newsmax, “The jury’s from Manhattan. They all hate Trump.”

Manhattan is liberal, but these depictions of the jury are bogus. Trump’s lawyers vetted prospective jurors, weeding out those whose social media posts exposed them as Trump haters. One of the seated jurors said he watched Fox News. Another said he followed Trump on Truth Social. A third said she liked religious podcasts. One said he disagreed with some of Trump’s policies but agreed with others. Another said she appreciated that “President Trump speaks his mind.” The most common pattern among the jurors was a lack of strong feelings about politics.

It’s true that in 2020, Trump won only 12.3 percent of the vote in Manhattan, while Biden won 86.7 percent. But even with those lopsided numbers, it’s hard to pluck twelve jurors from a random sample of Manhattanites without including a Trump voter. By the time you’ve picked your sixth juror, the odds that your jury doesn’t have a Trump supporter are down to 45 percent. By the time you’re on the twelfth juror, the odds are down to about 20 percent. The most likely outcome, based on random probability, is ten Biden voters and two Trump voters.

That’s why the jury’s unanimity matters. The vote on each felony count wasn’t 10–2. It was 12–0. All the jurors, including any who sympathized with Trump, found him guilty. But Republican lawmakers don’t care. They’ve gone right on smearing the jury. A few examples:

• “We know how they feel against President Trump in New York. And so what do you expect’s going to happen? There was zero chance he was going to get a fair trial.” (Sen. Markwayne Mullin)

• “A complete travesty” delivered by “a jury from the most liberal county in America.” (Sen. Marco Rubio)

• “A jury pool that comes from one of the most liberal areas of America” helped to make it “impossible for Donald Trump to get a fair trial.” (Sen. Lindsey Graham)

• “Democrat prosecutors. Biased jury. This trial was rigged from the start.” (Rep. Troy Nehls)

• “This guilty verdict is what happens when you have a biased prosecutor, judge, and jury!” (Rep. Matt Rosendale)

• “They picked from a pool of Trump haters.” (Rep. Ronny Jackson)

• “A kangaroo court in a third world city.” (Sen. Kevin Cramer)

3. Only fools or haters could have found Trump guilty.

The GOP’s jury denialism, like its election denialism, is unfalsifiable. If one allegation of ballot fraud doesn’t pan out, Trump and his allies move on to another. And if one or two jurors in the hush-money trial turn out to have been Trump voters, no problem: Republicans have concocted lots of other reasons to dismiss the verdict.

One argument is that the deliberations were too short. “Thirty-four charges, and they come back like that? It’s clear to me they didn’t consider any of the evidence. They had their mind made up,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Newsmax. “They went in there—‘Hey, we’re gonna find the guy guilty, we don’t like him,’ whatever the reason. They didn’t even analyze the evidence that was presented. There was no crime. There was no evidence he did anything wrong.”

Matt Whitaker, Trump’s former acting attorney general, agreed. “The jury spent about 20 minutes on each charge,” he groused. “That seems like a little bit of a slapdash, hoping to get out of there as soon as possible.”

Another argument is that the verdict was implausibly one-sided. Blackburn, in a radio interview, said some of her friends suspected foul play: “Guilty on all 34 counts? So was the fix in before this ever got going?”

The bottom line, according to congressional Republicans, is that no honest, sensible person could have reached such a verdict. “I’m disappointed in the jury, because I would have hoped that they would have seen through the charade that was put on by Alvin Bragg and Judge Merchan,” Rep. Donalds told ABC News. “They did not.”

Lawmakers who barely set foot in the courtroom now pretend to understand the case better than the jury did. “I had a front row seat to the circus in New York City last week,” Rep. Keith Self tweeted after the verdict. “While the jurors may have been fooled, the American people are not.” In a Fox Business interview, Rep. Cory Mills protested that prosecutors had proved nothing—“and you’re going to tell me that 34 jurors of his peers came to a conclusion without a shadow of a doubt? I was in that courtroom. I can tell you that’s not the case.”

4. Nobody who respects this jury can be a Republican in good standing.

The GOP has transformed itself into a cult by ostracizing members who put any principle above loyalty to Trump. That’s what happened to Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who served on the January 6th Committee. And now it’s happening to members who acknowledge, even with major caveats, that the verdict in Manhattan deserves respect.

Shortly after the jury’s decision was announced, Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican governor of Arkansas, tweeted: “It is not easy to see a former President and the presumptive GOP nominee convicted of felony crimes; but the jury verdict should be respected. An appeal is in order but let’s not diminish the significance of this verdict.” For this heresy, Hutchinson was denounced by other Republicans. Rep. Derrick Van Orden told him: “Kick Rocks, coward.”

The College Republicans tweeted, “Today’s convictions are the result of a politically motivated prosecution, but a verdict was handed down by jurors whose decisions were made in accordance with our criminal justice system. As such, the outcome of this trial should be respected. Just like the decision of voters on November 5th.” This, too, earned a flood of rebukes. Rep. Matt Gaetz lambasted the group, writing that “the verdict should be condemned” as “the outgrowth of a rigged, corrupt process.”

Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland and now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, tweeted just before the verdict: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

Chris LaCivita, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, responded by publicly telling Hogan: “You just ended your campaign.” Sen. Mike Lee castigated Hogan: “I don’t respect this verdict. Nor should anyone.” On CNN, Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, reprimanded Hogan, saying he “should never have said something like that” and “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican party.” The lesson of the Manhattan verdict, she declared, was that Americans “can’t trust our judicial system.” When she was asked whether the RNC would withhold resources from Hogan’s campaign, she replied ominously: “I will get back to you on all the specifics monetarily.”

On the morning after the verdict, Trump’s allies went on TV and social media to signal that no dissent would be tolerated. Graham tweeted a warning against “any Republican who accepts this rigged verdict.” Mike Huckabee, in a Fox News interview, scorned the notion that anyone should “respect the jury” or “respect the legal system.” He condemned the verdict, fuming, “I’m disgusted with so-called Republicans who aren’t standing with President Trump today, who somehow act like, ‘Oh, this was just the rule of law, and we have to respect it.’”

Contempt for the Manhattan jury—and for any other jury that convicts Trump—is now a core commitment of the GOP. “Donald Trump is innocent. To hell with what the jury said,” Rep. Donalds tweeted after the verdict. On CNN, Laura Coates asked the congressman, “Do you respect what the jurors have had to say in their verdict?” He replied: “No, I don’t.” Rep. Lauren Boebert preemptively dismissed the verdict: “I don’t care what the radical Left NYC jury decides. I’M VOTING TRUMP.” Rep. Nancy Mace, echoing other lawmakers, proclaimed that “the real jury” was the electorate that would return Trump to power in November.

5. The jury is trying to steal the election.

For more than a year, Republicans have accused Trump’s prosecutors of interfering in the election by trying to tie him down in court and derail his candidacy. Now that the Manhattan verdict is in, some are extending this accusation to his jurors. Langworthy, in a statement, accused them of scheming “to imprison a Presidential nominee and steal the election out of the hands of the voters. A corrupt prosecutor, a corrupt judge, and a corrupt jury conspired to undermine our democracy.”

With that, the two branches of Republican denialism come together. If Trump loses the 2024 election, and no significant ballot fraud can be found, Republicans will say the outcome is illegitimate anyway, because it was altered by a corrupt verdict in the hush-money trial.

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THE MANHATTAN CASE certainly has its shortcomings. It’s an odd combination of business-record misdemeanors, gross sexual behavior, shady hush-money schemes, and tenuous interpretations of campaign finance law. Critics of the case have every right to call out these defects and challenge them on appeal. But the GOP’s response to the verdict goes well beyond that. The party of Trump is mounting a propaganda campaign against any jury that threatens its leader. And it’s excommunicating any Republican who speaks up for the rule of law.