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A group fighting against former President Donald Trump’s legal challenges is pushing back with a digital video accusing those who have brought charges against him of abusing their legal power to obstruct his efforts to retake the White House.
It's the latest entry in a heated area that's only going to get more charged as Trump's criminal trials get started next year. Already, the former president has faced a gag order in his New York civil trial (which was temporarily lifted Thursday) preventing him from attacking court staff.
The 60-second digital spot from the Article III Project accuses “activist” judges and prosecutors of weaponizing the legal system for political gain. The video opens with a figure of Lady Justice, followed by a gavel and pair of handcuffs, and narration that says, “Activist prosecutors and judges have destroyed the rule of law, the scales of justice forever broken and imbalanced. The worst offenders? Those who have weaponized the legal system for political gain against President Trump.”
It ticks through the cases against Trump in Georgia, New York, Washington, and Florida, singling out Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis for “using a witch hunt as a guise to arrest a former president and make him take a mugshot,” and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of Manhattan for letting the city “fall to pieces,” while Judge Arthur Engoron “laughed and smirked” as Trump awaited trial.
“Even now they’re resorting to insane legal theories to take him off the ballot,” the ad continues. “They’ve gone after a President of the United States. Do you think they’ll stop there?”
It’s a message that mirrors Trump’s efforts to cast his legal woes as the work of a weaponized justice system that won’t hesitate to turn on its political adversaries — and a preview of what's to come next year.
Led by Mike Davis, Article III Project was founded in an effort to press for conservative judicial and other key nominees but evolved into an attack vector targeting Democratic nominations after Biden took office. It took a bare-knuckle approach to the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson over her sentencing record in child porn cases.
The former chief counsel for nominations to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, Davis has worked to confirm Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, for whom he later clerked on the Supreme Court.
Davis has filled a messaging void to defend Trump that establishment Republican fixtures have largely avoided.
In a statement to NBC News, Davis said Trump’s political opponents are using their legal powers to thwart the former president’s reelection prospects, attacks that could upend our political system.
“These judges and prosecutors are leftwing partisan activists masquerading as public servants,” Davis said. “They’ve weaponized law enforcement and the judiciary to take out the leading candidate for President of the United States. Americans need to know what is happening in their country.”
A combative former Republican White House and Senate aide and cable news fixture, Davis has been at the forefront of the public defense of Trump since the FBI executed a search warrant at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 to seize more than 100 classified documents he had previously been asked to return.
Davis has since argued against the indictments facing Trump in Georgia, Florida, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C., a New York civil fraud case, and the efforts underway in certain states to bar him from the ballot in 2024 under the 14th Amendment.