Well-known conservative journalist Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to two Republican Senators, is warning of the “raw display of political power” Donald Trump is using to attack the court during his trial.

During the early days of the Trump New York criminal trial many noted the ex-president was alone. He was sitting, and at times, snoozing, alone in court, unsupported by family members or friends.

Multiple reports had described Trump as “glowering.”

MSNBC’s Joy Reid commented “how alone Donald Trump looked,” with “no family there, no supporters there.”

“He looked smaller,” she observed.

Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, had told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that “more than anything else,” what’s important is “the extent to which he’s had no control over the situation.” She explained “he needs control in order to project the image that he’s been able to project for so long. Without that control it all falls apart.”

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“I mean, we know that Donald is a very weak person, or at least some of us know that, and that his ego is a very fragile thing that needs to be bolstered in every moment. He needs the rallies. He needs the applause in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago because he knows deep down he’s nothing of what he claims to be,” she added.

Trump spent days first urging his supporters to rally on the courthouse steps, then to protest at courthouses across the county and “rally behind MAGA,” he demanded.

When they didn’t, he falsely claimed they were being blocked in New York by law enforcement. He described the Criminal Courts Building as locked up like “Fort Knox.”

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! ” Trump wrote falsely, with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins quickly disputing his claim.

The optics have changed.

Trump had “complained that ‘no one is defending me,'” NBC News reported on May 1. “He grumbled outside the courtroom that there were no protesters supporting him outside.”

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Then his son, Eric Trump, showed up, along with “his strategist and de facto campaign chief Susie Wiles and longtime adviser Dan Scavino. Trump’s legal strategist Boris Epshteyn was by his side two days last week. And Natalie Harp, a communications aide, has been present.”

Now, top Republican lawmakers are taking turns showing up in court to demonstrate party loyalty, becoming de-facto surrogates.

A Fox News “BREAKING NEWS” alert late Monday morning read: “Watch Live: GOP Senators, other trump defenders speak outside the NY v Trump trial.”

Indeed, Republican Senators and Trump allies are now flocking to the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building.

Last week, U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro were at the courthouse during Stormy Daniels testimony.

Rick Scott (R-Fla) and Jeanine Pirro (R-Fox) at the courthouse today = extra emotional support for Trump while Stormy Daniels is testifying? pic.twitter.com/KR5PfAcWgl

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 9, 2024

On Monday, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and JD Vance (R-OH) were in the courthouse, standing next to Eric Trump behind the ex-president during his mid-day news conference.

Trump this morning has printed out a new New York Times poll showing him ahead in swing states and also some Fox News columns for good measure. note that JD Vance and Tuberville are behind him pic.twitter.com/xSreViCWk0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 13, 2024

Tuberville, a far-right conspiracy theorist and white nationalist, also held a separate press conference outside the courthouse Monday, decrying the “depressing” courtroom, claiming Trump is being forced to experience “mental anguish,” attacking District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and promoting a false, anti-immigrant narrative suggesting perhaps the jurors aren’t American citizens.

Tuberville: The Republican candidate for President is going through mental anguish in a courtroom that’s very depressing. Very depressing! pic.twitter.com/HHmrYpuJwS

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 13, 2024

Tuberville: I am disappointed in looking at the American citizens— the supposedly American citizens in that courtroom pic.twitter.com/14cNFyjzqx

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 13, 2024

“We discussed what I predicted would be a growing trend of GOP officials, including VP hopefuls, appearing courtside,” Carpenter wrote Monday morning.

“Trump is under order a gag order,” she noted. “If he directs anyone to make statements that his [sic] prohibited from making that is a direct violation of the gag order and the judge must be monitoring these surrogate statements.”

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She adds, “previous surrogates have not opted to defend Trump on the merits. They [are] following the Trump playbook of attacking family members of the court, which Trump’s former lawyer Ty Cobb described as a ‘strategic’ act of intimidation, ‘designed around his traditional approach to delegitimizing the proceedings.’ That’s a real threat afoot here,” she observes.

“It’s really worth reflecting on that,” Carpenter stresses. “Republican officials are scurrying up to NYC to launch awful, slimy attacks on the court.”

She warns, “assembling members of the GOP to defend Trump courtside is a raw display of political power. And again, this has to be emphasized, they are not defending Trump on the merits. They are attacking the court.”

“Trump has successfully co-opted the GOP to shield himself from political accountability and now he is using the GOP to shield himself from criminal accountability. That’s the difference between 2016/2020 and 2024. This is a very grave danger.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he has a “duty” and “responsibility” to contest the results of the presidential election if there is a question about the process complying with the U.S. Constitution and vowed to do so again this year as he did in 2020, if the same “circumstances were presented.” The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the 2020 case with Johnson’s claims, and his argument was dismissed by a constitutional expert as being on “the far-right fringes of American legal thought.”

Johnson joined an increasing number of top GOP lawmakers this past week who were asked if they will accept the results of the 2024 election, especially if the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, loses. Up until the 2020 election amid Donald Trump’s interference, the United States had enjoyed the regular, peaceful transfer of power for more than 200 years.

Before being elevated to Speaker, Johnson was a little known Louisiana Republican back-bencher who happened to be the “congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, advocating an interpretation of the Constitution so outlandish that not even the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could swallow it,” according to Michael Waldman, a constitutional attorney and president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

That effort came in the form of an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, signed by 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives, including Johnson.

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“Johnson was the legal mastermind behind the doomed push to decertify the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Waldman wrote in October of 2023 after Johnson became Speaker of the House. “He pressured colleagues to sign on to his effort, warning them ominously that Trump would be ‘anxiously awaiting the final list to review.'”

In a lengthy interview with Politico published Friday, Johnson was asked if he had any “regrets” about his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won.

“No, I don’t,” Johnson told Politico. “My point in the amicus brief — people often ask me about this and they never read the brief — was a very simple and very profoundly important legal question. And that is, was the plain language of the Constitution violated in the days that led up to the 2020 election? And it very clearly was, because the language of the Constitution says plainly the state legislatures are the bodies in each of the states that determine the process by which electors are chosen. In a presidential election year, it’s a critically important thing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, Waldman notes, refused to hear the case. He wrote that Johnson’s legal argument is “an obscure idea on the far-right fringes of American legal thought. Many of you now know the name — the ‘independent state legislature theory.’ Johnson argued that state legislators are the sole state-level decision-makers in federal elections, and that no one else can exercise any form of discretion, oversight, or agency to administer an election. It’s a baseless, ahistorical, dangerous, and completely bonkers reading of the Constitution.”

Johnson claims that only state legislatures have control over the specifics of elections management. But in most states the Secretary of State is – by law – responsible for the elections and how they are managed.

Johnson doubled down in his claims, suggested that the Supreme Court shirked its responsibility, and even suggested they did so because the real answer was too “profound” and “unsettling” for the nation to grapple with.

“Now remember my background as a constitutional law attorney,” declared Johnson, who frequently likes to remind reporters of his work before becoming a congressman. “For 20 years, I litigated constitutional questions in the courts. And to me, this was just such a plain and very important question to be answered. The only mechanism we had to present that to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, was to attach it along to that Texas case that was going to be before the court. That’s why the amicus brief was filed there. The Supreme Court dodged the question. Perhaps they calculated that the answer was so profound, it would be so unsettling, and it was not worth them addressing, but well.”

The Speaker made clear he would do the “exact” same thing again.

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“And so you asked me if I regret that? I don’t. I would do the exact same thing today if the circumstances were presented, because I feel like I have a duty. I’m an officer of the Congress and I have a responsibility. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and if it’s plainly on its face not being followed, I have an obligation as an officer of this body to present that to the judicial branch.”

Waldman went on to write, “Johnson’s election denial isn’t mere ‘one could argue’ lawyerly guff. Johnson has ties to a movement that incorporates election denial into evangelical Christianity. Members of the movement held prayer sessions in which they asked for divine intervention to reverse the 2020 result.”

“Mild-mannered Mike Johnson is a no-holds-barred, hold-on-to-power-at-all-costs election denier,” Waldman concluded. “How could this matter in 2024? It seems clear the election deniers won’t wait until the actual election this time. Their bid to subvert the results will start well before ballots are cast and counted. Johnson may preside over key proceedings.”

Indeed, as Newsweek reported Friday, former Trump “fixer,” attorney Michael Cohen, is warning of a Republican “plot” to “steal the election.”

“Their plot to steal the election if they don’t win has already been set in motion,” Cohen warned on his podcast. “Open your eyes. It’s already being set in motion.”

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In a clear attack on the executive branch, the judicial system, states’ rights, and the rule in law in America, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson vowed on Tuesday to use all the powers of Congress at his disposal to end all four current criminal prosecutions of ex-president Donald Trump.

Johnson’s remarks late Tuesday morning came at the exact same time Stormy Daniels was giving sworn testimony about her alleged sexual relationship with Trump in a Manhattan Superior Court case. The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee is on trial for 34 felonies related to falsification of business records when he allegedly paid hush money to the adult film star, then covered up those payments in what prosecutors say was election interference.

“President Trump has done nothing wrong here and he continues to be the target of endless lawfare,” Speaker Johnson told reporters Tuesday during an official House news conference (video below). “It has to stop. And you’re gonna see the United States Congress address this in every possible way that we can, because we need accountability. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s bigger than President Trump. It’s about the people’s faith in our system of justice. And we’re gonna get down to the bottom of it. All these cases need to be dropped, because they are a threat to our system.”

Johnson’s remarks also come as he faces an ouster threat from far-right MAGA Republican Christian nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Speaker, who repeatedly has said he speaks to Trump frequently, spent the weekend at the ex-president’s Florida resort and residence, Mar-a-Lago. He also traveled there just weeks ago as Greene’s threats were heating up. Trump and Johnson held a joint press conference on “election integrity,” an image some say was a show of strength and support from the leader of his party.

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Johnson’s job is being protected by Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and the vast majority of the Democratic caucus, which have promised to protect him should Greene call up her motion to vacate.

Claiming Republicans are “trying to keep steadying hands on the wheel here and keep the legislative branch moving and operating in the best interest of the people,” Johnson also alleged, “One of the things that is also in jeopardy right now is our judicial branch. And it’s our system of government itself. And I don’t think we can say often enough here how much of that has been abused under this administration, and with local prosecutors, state prosecutors, and at the federal level, who are using lawfare. They’re using our judicial system to go after political opponents.”

The Speaker continued his targeting, declaring Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “case should never have been brought.”

“If there’s ever been an example of lawfare, everybody can look at that and see, the trial is being orchestrated by Democrats, supporters of President Biden who are trying to make a name for themselves. I mean, they’re pretty open about that. They used it in their campaign flips. We’ve got a Democrat District Attorney, a Biden donor judge whose daughter is a Democratic political consultant and has clients that use the case in their solicitation emails to raise money.”

Justice Juan Merchan, CNN reported last month, made a $15 donation to the Biden campaign, amid a total of $35 total in 2020.

Johnson also called Justice Merchan “a well-known Democrat” who “is pursuing an indefensible gag order on President Trump,” and “trying to override President Trump’s constitutional right to defend himself against the constant smears of his political opponents.”

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Pointing to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case, often called the “classified documents” case, Johnson called it “the weaponization of our justice system.”

He called all the cases against the ex-president “a clear attempt to keep Donald Trump in the courtroom and off the campaign trail. That’s what this is. It’s an election interference. It is borderline criminal conspiracy and the American people see right through it.”

Watch a short clip of Johnson’s remarks below or at this link.

Johnson: President Trump has done nothing wrong… it has to stop and you’re going to see the Congress address this in every possible way because we need accountability. All these cases need to be dropped because they are a threat to our entire system pic.twitter.com/Vvg6pQRU52

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 7, 2024

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