Trump felony convictions reveal Minnesota GOP’s lack of conviction

Two years ago, Minnesota Republicans hammered together the party platform.

Economic prosperity. Civil rights. Family. Respect for the rule of law. They laid out their bedrock principles, plank by plank, where Minnesotans could stand when everything else seemed to be falling apart.

Principles like a code of conduct for elected state officials and requiring them to resign and lose their pensions and benefits if convicted of a felony.

A jury just convicted former President Donald Trump of 34 felonies. The Minnesota GOP has a problem with that.

Specifically, a problem with the rule of law when it’s being applied firmly to the backside of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“I am deeply disappointed by the verdict in Presidential Donald Trump’s trial,” Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman David Hann said in a statement issued shortly after the conviction of a candidate who paid off a porn star and was found guilty of manipulating campaign finance law to cover it up. “[I]t raises serious concerns about the fairness and impartiality of our judicial system.”

In the space of a news cycle, the MNGOP pivoted from screaming for the removal of a Democratic state senator accused of a felony to calling on Minnesotans to vote for the 34-fold convicted felon, Donald Trump.

DFL state Sen. Nicole Mitchell has been the end-of-session gift that kept giving to the GOP after she allegedly crept into her stepmother’s basement in the dead of night, dressed all in black like a cat burglar. She stands accused of felony burglary and, wow, does the state stand united in wanting to know the backstory on that one. She says she wanted her father’s ashes. Her backpack says she also wanted her stepmother’s laptop.

Minnesota Republicans knocked the issue around like a tetherball. Democrats hold a one-vote majority in the state Senate and Mitchell is that one vote. Before the session ended, Hann fired off a barrage of press releases calling for the ouster of the accused-but-not-convicted senator.

Removing Mitchell from her committee assignments, but allowing her to still cast votes on the floor “reeks of hypocrisy,” Hann thundered.

“By allowing DFL Sen. Nicole Mitchell to cast votes, despite the serious ethical concerns surrounding her, the Senate DFL is eroding the integrity and fairness that Minnesotans rightly demand from their elected representatives.”

After the session, Mitchell, was no longer a needed vote, and top party officials, including the governor and DFL chairman, joined the call for her to resign. Mitchell, through her lawyer, has declined to so far.

Hann had less to say about the fact that in early May, as the Minnesota legislative year was lurching to a close, Trump was facing the ethical concerns raised by four criminal cases in four jurisdictions on charges ranging from the porn star hush money payoff to tampering with elections to a different state election tampering case to stashing top-secret documents in Mar-A-Lago bathrooms.

It was a display of political spinelessness last seen when conservative evangelicals lined up behind the “Two Corinthians” guy in 2016 — the same guy currently working to undermine America’s faith in any election he loses and any rule of law that applies to him.

Let’s give Chairman Hann the last word.

Watching a party prioritize “power over the welfare of the people of Minnesota is not just disappointing, it’s a disgrace.”