Some prominent Black allies of former President Donald Trump hope that his guilty verdict could help him out with Black voters come November.
After the jury in Donald Trump’s hush money case handed him a guilty verdict on Thursday, the former president and his supporters claimed he was an undeserving target of the justice system. And some high-profile backers of the former president tied his conviction directly to injustices suffered by Black Americans, something Trump has hinted at in the past.
“New York executed a political lynching in front of the world and exposed the rigged justice system Blacks have endured for decades,” Harrison Floyd, who led the outreach effort to Black voters in Trump’s 2020 campaign, posted on X. Floyd is one of Trump’s co-defendants in his Georgia election interference case.
Trump and his allies say the prosecution is part of an effort by Democrats to keep Trump out of the White House and to reinstall President Joe Biden. They hope to hurt Biden’s chances by cutting into his support from Black voters as he faces a lack of enthusiasm and an information gap among the important voting group. Black conservative leaders say disillusioned voters watching Trump be indicted will move further away from the Democratic Party.
“Black Americans are waking up to the politicization of the justice system against President Trump,” Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation, posted on X. “We remember the Biden Crime Bill of 1994. We will ALSO remember in November.”
“BCF is energized, resolute, and ready to mobilize millions of voters across the country. Now more than ever!” a post from the Black Conservative Federation’s X account read.
Trump said in February that Black people identified with him due to his criminal charges. He told a crowd at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual awards gala in February that he is “being indicted for the Black population.”
“A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me, because they had been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. … Maybe there’s something to it,” Trump said at the time.
Trump did not appeal directly to the Black community in a news conference on Friday, where he vowed to appeal his conviction in the hush money trial. But he did remind folks how quickly they could be in his shoes.
“This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” Trump said. “These are bad people; these are sick people.”
Other Black Trump allies made similar remarks in their reactions to the jury’s verdict.
“The judicial system has been weaponized to go after Presidents for political gain. Imagine what they can do to you,” Ben Carson, Trump’s ally and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, posted on X.
“Legal experts all over the country have mutually agreed that this trial puts our justice system at risk,” Texas Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt posted. “If they can do this to a former president they can do it to any American!”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.