The new head of the Massachusetts Republican Party said Tuesday that the indictment and arraignment of former President Donald Trump on nearly three dozen felony charges "appears to be based on contrived legal arguments and discredits the notion of judicial integrity and impartiality."
Trump on Tuesday pleaded not guilty in the Criminal Court of the City of New York to 34 felony charges connected to an alleged hush money payment made to a porn star by an intermediary in the late stages of the 2016 presidential election, Trump's alleged attempts to cover up the situation and his reimbursement of the intermediary by falsifying business records.
MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale said the case brought by a Democrat district attorney against Trump, who is running for president again in 2024, appears to be politically motivated.
"The case was declined by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Elections Commission yet incredibly was taken up by the Manhattan DA," Carnevale said of the charges, which are for alleged violations of New York state law rather than federal law. "The prosecution and [Tuesday's] arraignment appear to be little more than a way for this DA who campaigned on prosecuting the former President to advance his own career."
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After Trump's arraignment Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the case against Trump centers on "34 false statements made to cover up other crimes." "These are felony crimes in New York state, no matter who you are," Bragg said.
Trump easily won Massachusetts' 2016 Republican presidential primary with 312,425 votes, or 49.1 percent. The Trump-Pence ticket got 1,090,893 votes here in the 2016 general election, or 32.8 percent, en route to the White House. In 2020, the sitting president topped former Gov. Bill Weld in the Republican primary with 239,115 votes or 87 percent of the total. In the 2020 general election that he lost to Joe Biden, Trump scored 1,167,202 votes in Massachusetts, or 32.1 percent.
"The last several years have been marked by political divisiveness both at a national level and here in Massachusetts. This arraignment does a disservice to our Nation's attempt to move toward more productive political dialogue," Carnevale, a longtime Trump supporter who replaced Trump diehard Jim Lyons as MassGOP chair earlier this year, said.
