There was an obvious tension present during the second night of the Republican convention, a night centered on the theme of “making America safe again.’
It wasn’t simply that America has by observable measures gotten safer over the past several years, undercutting the rhetorical point of the exercise. It was instead that the relentless focus on the GOP’s dedication to the rule of law as it nominated a convicted criminal to serve, once again, as its nominee for president.
“We in the Republican Party are the law and order team,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said from the lectern. “We always have been and we always will be the advocates for the rule of law.”
Well, not always always.
The tension between what Donald Trump is facing and has done and the Republican Party’s vision of itself is reconciled through the oft-repeated rhetoric of the former president. He is merely a victim, someone targeted unfairly for his politics. It’s a remarkably effective line of argument, convincing his base, his allies and even, it seems, the Supreme Court.
The entire point of dedication to the rule of law, though, is that you have respect for and confidence in the process even as you recognize that it is imperfect. The concept is predicated on the idea that the dispensation of justice is mechanical and objective. If you eagerly champion the baseless idea that the system is targeting your allies, you are not an advocate for the rule of law. You are an advocate for the selective application of power, which the rule of law is designed to counteract.
Which brings us to reality-TV star Savannah Chrisley.
Chrisley began her speech at the convention Tuesday night by rattling off her parents’ identification numbers within the federal prison system.
“You may have seen my family on TV,” she said, referring to a program that ran on the USA Network. “But for the past decade, we’ve been consumed with a different kind of drama. My family was persecuted by rogue prosecutors in Fulton County due to our public profile.”
The crowd booed, recognizing the location as one in which Trump himself was indicted.
“I know! Fulton County!’ Chrisley continued. ‘They know how to do it, don’t they?”
She excoriated prosecutors for convicting her parents of fraud despite their being the victims of a “dishonest business partner.’ She also complained that a prosecutor in the “most heavily Democrat county in the state, before an Obama-appointed judge … called us ‘the Trumps of the South.’ ‘ This, she said, was a badge of honor.
“We live in a nation founded on freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Justice is supposed to be blind. But today, we have a two-faced justice system,” Chrisley said. She noted Trump’s prosecution contrasting it, oddly, with President Biden’s son Hunter not yet having been sentenced. “Look at what they are doing to countless Christians and conservatives that the government has labeled them extremists or even worse.” Look, she said, at Stephen K. Bannon.
“We need to rise above the persecution. We need to hold rogue prosecutors accountable,” Chrisley said. She added that “we need to expose the Democrats’ corruption and better yet, the Biden family’s corruption.” Trump, she said, had only one conviction that mattered: “his conviction to make America great again.” The crowd applauded heartily.
So! About all of that.
Chrisley’s parents, Todd and Julie Chrisley, were convicted on charges of conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion and are currently in prison. But they were not charged by rogue prosecutors working for Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis. She wasn’t in that position when they were charged, but it doesn’t matter: the charges were federal, filed in Georgia where their accountant was based.
What’s more, they were filed in 2019 under U.S. District Attorney Byung J. Pak, working for the Justice Department under President Trump. (Pak resigned after the 2020 election as Trump was trying to have the results in Georgia overturned.)
There are other sordid details surrounding all of this, including that Todd Chrisley was fined more than $750,000 for defaming an investigator for the Georgia Department of Revenue. The end result, though, is that the Chrisleys were sentenced to 19 years in prison in November 2022. An appeal is underway.
It is understandable that Savannah Chrisley would side with her parents and view their prosecution as unfair. But her presentation of that case wasn’t being made on the USA Network or on social media. It was being made as an argument in support of the Republican Party and its nominee for president. A nominee who, like Chrisley, is comfortable in disparaging indictments that he finds personally inconvenient. A nominee who, if reelected to the White House, would almost certainly quickly pardon Chrisley’s parents as he so frequently pardoned or granted clemency to his allies when he was president: Dinesh D’Souza. Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner.
For all of the somber invocation of the Republican Party’s loyalty to law enforcement and respect for traditional American institutions, Chrisley’s presence on the stage laid bare the self-serving nature of the GOP’s rhetoric about prosecutions. They believe deeply in the rule of law as it applies to protesters on college campuses, Hunter Biden’s gun charges and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). But when the criminality is for things like fraud or tax evasion or spiriting classified material off to your home, the system is rigged against conservatives. Defund the IRS! Defund the FBI!
Chrisley’s speech aimed at reinforcing the idea that prosecutors were targeting the right unfairly. The sleight of hand about timing and venue were merely mechanisms for making that case. But it was a useful speech because it formally established the legal boundaries that Republicans respect: those around people they don’t like. This is, in fact, what Trump intends to bring back to the White House.