If former President Donald Trump is indicted, the country will no longer be free, according to a local attorney.
“If they do this to Donald Trump, we will live in a police state where the new ruling Hunta will execute all the members of the last one,” said Mark McCloskey, a personal injury attorney in St. Louis and former candidate for Senate.
McCloskey was reacting to Trump’s announcement last week that he believed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would indict, arrest and charge him over hush money allegations involving his former attorney Michael Cohen, and porn star Stormy Daniels.
“Indicting Trump not only devalues the office but it devalues the entire concept that this is a Democratic republic," McCloskey told the St. Louis Record. “Once you start using police power to persecute your political adversaries, that's the end of anything that resembles a free Democratic republic. We will just be like a Caribbean police state.”
Trump had come to McCloskey’s defense three years ago after the McCloskeys were arrested for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching along their private street toward former Mayor Lyda Krewson's home nearby.
McCloskey and his wife Patty subsequently were tapped to present a pre-recorded video that was televised on the opening night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Bragg has yet to indict Trump, but three Republican House Committee Chairmen aren’t taking any chances. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky), and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wisconsin) all requested Bragg’s testimony at their committee hearings.
As for Trump’s political future, McCloskey doesn’t foresee the embattled real estate magnate being barred from the presidency in 2024 even if he is arrested and charged with a felony.
“There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that precludes a presidential candidate from running even if he gets convicted of an ordinary felony,” he said. “The qualifications for the president are laid out in the Constitution. Just being charged with a felony won't preclude him.”
McCloskey is worried an arrest would cast Trump in a bad light among voters.
“Everybody's saying that if he gets arrested, charged, and then acquitted, that he is guaranteed to get elected but I don't know,” he added. “I think a lot of soccer moms will think this just proves he is really the bad guy that we always thought he was. So, I'm a little concerned about that.”