JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Yesterday, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey testified before the House Judiciary Committee to highlight the legally specious political persecution of President Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His appearance before the committee came exactly two weeks after Bragg obtained his tenuous and politically motivated conviction against President Trump.
“The people of the State of Missouri, whom I am tasked with protecting, watched in horror recently as the Left’s direct assault on President Trump manifested itself in the form of a politically motivated, legally specious, and corrupt prosecution of the President, which resulted in an errant criminal conviction. We are a nation of laws that define who we are as a people, that establish systems of checks and balances to protect individuals from persecution, and that are supposed to be equally enforced and equally applied. Instead, the Left has prioritized its hatred of President Trump above the rule of law,” said Attorney General Bailey in his opening remarks.
“To put it plainly, the Left hates President Trump more than they love this country. Government officials at the federal and state levels have censored President Trump, filed civil suits in order to sanction him, illegally removed him from the ballot, and perverted the law in order to prosecute him. This is a strategic attack against a former President of the United States, against a current candidate for President, and against the value we as a nation place on our system of government, our legal system, and our very identity. The term lawfare, while apt, fails to adequately convey the moral depravity underpinning this strategic attack,” he continued.
Attorney General Bailey’s testimony focused on these key issues:
• The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s recent prosecution of President Trump represents one of the most morally abhorrent volleys in the Left’s on-going barrage of lawfare. This prosecution was politically motivated and replete with legal error.
• Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), scheming in lock-step with progressive Soros-backed prosecutors like Bragg, wreak havoc on the criminal justice system at every level, leaving a trail of crime, destruction, and human suffering in their wake. The DOJ actively funds the Vera Institute.
• The case against President Trump exposed rampant corruption, where the Biden administration’s crooked DOJ deployed personnel to New York to further the illicit prosecutions of Trump. The goal for these prosecutors was never to obtain an actual conviction but to take President Trump off of the campaign trail.
Attorney General Bailey previously demanded that Biden’s DOJ turn over any communications relating to the investigations or prosecutions of President Trump. His request for communications – documents, calendar appointments, meeting minutes and agendas – includes those between the DOJ and the offices of Bragg, New York Attorney General Leticia James, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
In that request for documents, Attorney General Bailey noted, “The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice.”
“In order to protect the rights of all Missouri voters who plan to participate in the 2024 presidential election, the State of Missouri, and all Americans, have the right to know to what extent the prosecutions of a prominent presidential candidate are being coordinated by the federal government, which is currently run by President Trump’s principal political opponent,” General Bailey concluded.
Read Attorney General Bailey’s written testimony here.
Watch Bailey’s opening statements here.
View the full hearing here.