If you think Republicans are still members of the law-and-order party, then you haven’t been paying attention lately. Since the rise of Donald Trump, the Republican definition of a crime has deviated widely from the law books and become highly selective. For readers confused by the party’s new stances on law and order, here’s a guide to what today’s Republicans consider a crime and what they don’t.
No crime: Federal crimes.
All federal crimes are charged and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Now that Republicans believe the department is armed with a Democratic Party strike force, particularly against Mr. Trump, the prosecutions can no longer be trusted. “The arming of federal law enforcement poses a mortal threat to a free society,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently tweeted.
The FBI, which investigates many federal crimes, has also become corrupted by the same political forces. “The FBI has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial law enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
And because tax crimes aren’t true crimes, Republicans have fought for years to reduce the number of IRS investigators battling fraud.
Crime: State and local crimes, if they occur in an urban area or in Democratic-controlled states.
“There is a relentless crime wave gripping Democratic-led New York City,” the Republican National Committee wrote last year. “And it’s not just New York. In 2021, violent crime peaked nationwide, with 14 major Democratic-led cities setting new record highs for homicide.” (In fact, the city’s crime rate has risen during the pandemic, as it has almost everywhere else, but it’s already started to decline and remains much lower than its 1990s high. New York remains one of the safest major cities in the world. the United States.)
Crime is so bad in many cities, Republican state leaders say, they’ve been forced to remove local prosecutors who let it happen. However, some of these movements are entirely political; a DailyExpertNews investigation found no connection between the policies of a prosecutor removed by Mr. DeSantis and local crime rates.
No Crime: Any crime that occurs in rural or Republican-controlled states.
Between 2000 and 2021, the per capita murder rate in states that voted for Donald Trump was 23 percent higher than in states that voted for Joe Biden, according to a major study. The gap is widening and is even visible in the rural areas of the Trump states.
But this didn’t come up when a Trump ally, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, held a hearing in New York in April to charge Manhattan’s prosecutor with laxity in crime, even though rates for all seven major crime categories are higher in Ohio than in New York City. Neither does House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — who tweet about Democratic “lawlessness” – talks about the per capita homicide rate in Bakersfield, California, which he represents, which has been the highest in California for many years and exceeds that of New York City.
Crime: What They Think Hunter Biden Did.
The Republican fantasy, actively pursued by the House Oversight Committee, is that Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, engaged in “influence peddling” by cashing in on the family name through foreign business deals. Republicans have yet to uncover a single piece of evidence proving this theory, but they don’t seem to doubt that it actually happened.
No crime: Which Hunter Biden will actually plead guilty to.
Specifically: two violations for not paying his taxes on time. Since tax crimes aren’t real crimes for Republicans, the charges are thus evidence of a love affair to let the president’s son go easy, when they’d rather he was charged with bribery and other forms of corruption. Mr Trump said the plea amounted to a “traffic ticket”. The government also charged Mr Biden with a small arms-related felony charge (although it said it would not prosecute this charge); gun-buying crimes are also not considered true crimes.
Not a crime either: what the Trump family did.
There is tremendous evidence of actual influence and self-dealing by the Trump family and the Trump Organization during and after Mr. Trump’s presidency, which appears to violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause and some federal ethics guidelines. Last week, The Times published new details about Mr Trump’s entanglement with the government of Oman, which will net his company millions of dollars from a powerful Middle Eastern player even if he runs for re-election.
Crime: Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.
“Hillary Clinton used a hammer to destroy evidence from a private email server and classified information on that server and was never charged.” wrote Nancy Mace, a Republican congressman from South Carolina. In fact, a three-year State Department investigation found instances of the deliberate transmission of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s server to be a “rare exception,” finding that “there was no convincing evidence of systematic, secret information”.
No crime: Donald Trump’s Abuse of Government Secrets.
The Justice Department has accused Mr. Trump of deliberately stealing classified documents from the White House — including top military secrets — and then lying about owning them and refusing government demands to return them. Nevertheless, former Vice President Mike Pence warned against suing his old boss because it would be “terribly divisive,” and Mr. McCarthy said “this judgment is wrong by this DOJ” because it treats Mr. Trump differently from other officials in the same position. . (Except that no other official has ever been in the same position and refused to return classified material improperly taken from the White House.)
Crime: Any urban disruption that happened during the protests after George Floyd was killed.
Republicans have long argued that the federal government turned a blind eye to widespread violence during the 2020 protests, and in 2021 five Republican senators accused the Justice Department of an “apparent reluctance to punish these individuals.” While the protests were largely peaceful, The Associated Press found that more than 120 defendants nationwide pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal crimes related to the protests, including rioting, arson and conspiracy, with many receiving significant prison terms.
No crime: The invasion of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Many Republicans are ignoring the uprising that occurred when hundreds of people, instigated by Mr. Trump, tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election votes. “It wasn’t a riot,” said Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia, who said many of the rioters appeared to be on a “normal tourist visit.” Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman from Arizona, described the Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners” who were “prosecuted” by federal prosecutors. Mr. Trump said he was inclined to pardon many of the more than 600 convicts, and Mr. DeSantis said he was open to the possibility of pardoning any January 6 defendant who was the victim of a politicized or armed prosecution, including Mr. Trump. Trump.
Crime against children: Abortion and transgender care.
Performing most abortions is now a crime in 14 states, and 20 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for transgender minors (although some of those bans have been blocked by courts).
No crime against children: Possession of guns that kill them.
The sale or possession of assault weapons, used in so many school shootings, is allowed by federal law, even though gun-related incidents are now the leading cause of death for American children. Republicans also won’t pass a federal law requiring gun owners to store their guns safely away from children. It is not a federal crime for unlicensed gun dealers to sell a gun without a background check, which is how millions of guns are sold each year.
Any questions? Better not call CrimeStoppers.