Trump verdict launches fight over justice system in NC attorney general’s race

A group of retired judges and prosecutors were on their annual fishing trip at Lake Hiawassee in western North Carolina when news broke that a jury had found former President Donald Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The verdict sent North Carolina’s two candidates for attorney general — Reps. Dan Bishop, a Republican, and Jeff Jackson, a Democrat — into a tit-for-tat on social media with one another over whether the trial was rigged.

And Tom Keith, former Forsyth County district attorney, said it was similar to the conversations happening between the judges and prosecutors at the lake, who disagreed on whether Trump should have been charged.

“You have two diametrically opposed,” Keith said of Bishop and Jackson. “And here we are a bunch of ex-prosecutors, judges; and we’re falling into different camps.”

The hush-money case

Trump, 77, was accused of giving hush-money to adult film star, Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from discussing a sexual encounter she had with Trump, as a means to influence the 2016 election. The jury found him guilty of covering up the payments.

Prosecutors said in doing so, Trump committed tax fraud. Keith said he believes that accusation is what sealed Trump’s fate.

“The jury gets down to a simple thing: you’re trying to take a tax deduction for having sex with Stormy Daniels,” Keith said. “I think when it came down to it … every man on the street would be like, ‘Well, I can’t do that. That’s wrong.’”

The trial began on April 15, with opening testimony first heard on April 22. The jury deliberated for more than nine hours before reaching their consensus that Trump was guilty. He is the first ex-president convicted of a felony.

He now awaits sentencing on July 11 that could range from probation to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Defending Trump

Across the nation, Republican lawmakers immediately swarmed social media, coming to Trump’s defense.

Bishop, a Republican from Waxhaw, was among them.

“Election interference to ‘get Trump,’” Bishop posted on X. “It’s never been about justice — it’s about rigging and weaponizing our justice system against anyone who threatens their grip on power. We must end the leftist lawfare in November. #MAGA2024.”

Bishop stands out among Trump’s defenders because despite currently serving as a member of Congress, he is running in 2024 to become North Carolina’s attorney general. He is also running against Jackson, a Democrat from Charlotte, whose congressional district was redrawn to favor a Republican win.

If Bishop wins, he would be the first Republican attorney general the state has elected since 1896.

Jackson reposted Bishop’s social media post Thursday night with his own message.

“He immediately dismisses 34 unanimous verdicts by a jury as “rigged,” Jackson wrote. “He’s never been a prosecutor — and it shows. Disagreeing with a jury is one thing, but saying the whole thing is rigged is dishonest and destructive.”

Should DA have brought case against Trump?

Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr called Bishop’s messaging “unacceptable,” particularly from a licensed attorney or someone trying to be the state’s attorney general.

“It’s perfectly fair to say I disagree with the verdict, and disagree with the decision to bring the case, I disagree with rulings that happen invariably in litigation,” Orr said. “But clearly there was a law on the books, criminal law, that prohibited the kind of conduct that the jury found that Trump committed.”

Orr said it’s even fair to disagree on whether District Attorney Alvin Bragg should have brought the case, though he added that that might be giving Trump a pass because of his position of power.

“I think it’s perfectly legitimate to disagree,” Orr said. “But there’s sort of the standard of professionalism that lawyers, and I would submit candidates, should surely exhibit that disagrees with what transpired, as opposed to casting aspersions.”

Orr also noted that both Democrats and Republicans in the legal system have been under attack and there is diminished public confidence in the judicial system. He added that the kind of attacks that Bishop made Thursday night only weaken public confidence.

Social media posts

Bishop went on to call the trial “a sham” with “a sham outcome.” He said “a reckoning is coming for a gangster government.” And that “while victims of crime in New York City suffer, Alvin Bragg and criminals rejoice.”

He added that the latter is the vision Jackson has for North Carolina.

And while Bishop’s supporters piled on to Jackson, Bishop told them to wait for Jackson’s forthcoming kitchen-table apology.

Jackson is known for weekly social media posts, particularly on TikTok, that he makes at his kitchen table explaining the inner workings of Congress. Recently, he posted an apology video after misreading the reaction he would receive for voting in favor of a bill that could ultimately end with TikTok being banned in the United States.

Jackson told McClatchy Friday afternoon someone had sent him a screenshot of Bishop’s post that he retweeted and it was what he described as Bishop’s attack on the jury that “really bothered me.”

“When I was a prosecutor, I saw jury verdicts I disagreed with,” Jackson said. “You want to respond to that, in a rational way. Not by lashing out and calling the jury rigged. I just thought that behavior really targeting the jury is well beneath what we should expect from an attorney general, especially when we’re talking about someone who’s never prosecuted a single case.”

Jackson said the 12 jurors were called upon to make a decision that regardless of what they chose would upset tens of millions of people.

“The fact that the accusations against them as being rigged, started flying almost instantaneously, in the absence of even hearing from a single one of them, I thought was particularly troublesome,” Jackson said.

McClatchy reached out to Bishop’s office for comment but got no response.

Delay in bringing the case

Back at the lake, Keith said he would have never brought the case forward. He turned down many white-collar crimes, he said, because he was focused on violence and didn’t have the manpower to pursue a case like Trump’s.

“We just couldn’t handle it,” Keith said. “We didn’t have the resources.”

But he stopped for a minute and thought about the positions of Jackson and Bishop. He pointed out that Jackson has experience as a former prosecutor. And he said Bishop is a far-right Republican who would probably follow Trump’s lead.

“But you know, both are actually kind of right, because there was a crime, they did convict him and he had a fair trial and he had a great lawyer,” Keith said. “But they waited eight years, and that’s problematic.”

Keith said he voted for Trump in both elections.

He said when the prosecutors and judges discussed the case while fishing, there was one thing they all agreed on. He said waiting eight years was “really strange.”

North Carolina does not have a statute of limitations for felonies. But Keith said people expect to be tried before the recollections of witnesses change and before evidence disappears.

“It’s not fair to the defendant,” Keith said. “And sometimes not very fair to the state, because the circumstances change in that intervening time. The closer you can try it, whether that happens in a reasonable time, six months or a year, you probably have the most active evidence and it’s probably the fairest time to try it. But after eight years, who knows?”

Orr, who recalls calling Trump “a danger to our country and a danger to the Republican Party” in 2016, feels differently.

He noted how much changed in eight years. Daniels had come forward. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who was known as his “fixer,” had left Trump’s organization.

“It was certainly a case of better developed evidentiary basis for bringing a case,” Orr said. “Everybody felt this was the weakest of the four (cases) that Trump is facing and you got a unanimous verdict on 34 counts in about two days of deliberation, which feels to me like it was a pretty solid evidentiary case that was presented beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Keith said he does not believe this trial was “a sham.” Had they brought the case sooner, he said, there would be a lot less criticism.

But he said he wondered how many violent crimes went unpunished while New York prosecutors focused on Trump.

And then he doubled back.

“We have to get justice,” Keith said. “We have to convict everybody. He did this. The rich and powerful can’t get away with crime.

“I don’t think there’s a single answer that you’ll get from people.”