Why Mitch McConnell won’t speak out on Trump’s indictment

The silence from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about Donald Trump’s historic federal indictment is deafening. It’s based on fear and longing — McConnell’s singular focus on regaining the power of being Senate majority leader via a GOP Senate in 2024.

McConnell has declined to use the unique megaphone he holds as the leader of Senate Republicans. He didn’t say a word about the indictment when he spoke on the Senate floor Monday. He ignored reporters’ questions on the subject as he walked to and from the Senate chambers.

McConnell could provide a service to the nation — and he knows it — by balancing the Trump-worshiping misinformation coming from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Lee irresponsibly compared Trump’s indictment to what happens in South and Central American countries, paying no heed to the extraordinarily serious charges against the former president of stealing and exposing some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

Graham, on ABC’s “Sunday with George Stephanopoulos,” ridiculously asserted that “Hillary Clinton did similar things” to those for which Trump stands indicted. A grand jury has alleged that Trump intentionally retained top secret documents and obstructed justice, crimes of the highest order against the nation and the rule of law.

Crucially, evidence of obstruction and deliberate intent are what distinguish Trump’s case from those of former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. They cooperated as soon as they discovered classified documents inadvertently transferred outside government custody during or after their time in power.

Trump, by contrast, is alleged to have orchestrated a conspiracy to hide sensitive documents in his possession so he could keep them, apparently to be able to use them for his personal purposes, as the indictment alleges he did with two interviewers in July 2021.

McConnell’s lieutenants, to their credit, have been more forthright than he has been. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told reporters on Tuesday that there are “very serious allegations in the indictment” and that the Justice Department is “handling this fairly and as they would for any other elected official.”

“It’s not good,” said Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), describing the obstruction counts and the charges of unlawfully retaining classified materials.

Of course, the Trump indictment is only an accusation; McConnell could easily add this qualification to any condemnation: “If the indictment’s allegations are true.” (Then again, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment would not list and describe 31 highly classified documents unless Smith has them in hand from the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago.)

McConnell’s silence strips any shred of credibility from his Feb. 14, 2021, Senate floor defense of his decision not to vote to convict Trump for impeachment offenses of abusing presidential power and obstructing justice.

McConnell, in defending his vote not to convict Trump, deflected responsibility by asserting that courts were where Trump should be held accountable: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

That was a convenient off-ramp for someone who didn’t want to take the political risk of voting against Trump. If McConnell had rallied his caucus, the Senate could have reached the two-thirds threshold necessary to convict Trump and disqualified him from holding future federal office.

McConnell’s hope of regaining his lost power as Senate majority leader is undoubtedly why he remains silent now about the Trump indictment. He doesn’t want to offend Trump’s base, including voters in states like West Virginia, where he wants them to vote for Republican Jim Justice in 2024; in Ohio, where he wants the conservative base to help defeat Democrat Sherrod Brown; and in Montana, where he wants a future Republican candidate to take Democrat Jon Tester’s seat.

So don’t count on hearing from an instrumentalist power seeker like Mitch McConnell on Trump’s indictment any time soon. Every citizen who cares about both real justice and standing between a self-interested Republican Senate leader and his dream should get angry, get active and get a friend to vote against Senate candidates whose election would restore McConnell’s Senate leadership in 2024.

Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and civil litigator, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.