Supporters of former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump insist he’s the victim of a witch hunt — and that claim is ringing especially loudly in South Florida’s increasingly pro-Trump Latino community after Trump's criminal convicition last week in New York.
Since Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial last Thursday, Republican leaders have charged the U.S. justice system is politically rigged against him. Miami's Cuban-American congressional delegation has been particularly vocal, with GOP Florida Sen. Marco Rubio comparing the Trump trial and and verdict to the "show trials of communist Cuba" in the days of dictator Fidel Castro.
Former Miami state Rep. Carlos Trujillo, also a Cuban-American and Trump’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States, or OAS, from 2018 to 2021, echoed Rubio's controversial assertion in a brief conversation Tuesday with WLRN.
“You have a prosecutor [Democratic New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg] who campaigned on prosecuting Trump," Trujillo said. "You have a judge [New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan] who is not impartial" because he donated $35 to Democratics in 2020, including President Biden's campaign.
"The goal here is to deny the American people their ability to vote for President Trump.”
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Trump’s critics and many independent observers insist just as ardently that the prosecution, judge and jury in Trump's trial — in which he was charged with illegally falsifying business records to cover up payments made to a porn star to buy her silence about an alleged affair with Trump — were in fact fair. Most legal experts, in fact, say it's doubtful Trump will be able to overturn his conviction on appeal.
But Trujillo and other prominent Republicans insist the case was insignificant and never would have been brought to trial had Trump not been running for President again.
"If this case had been brought in South Florida it would have been an outrage," Trujillo said.
And that's true in in no small part, he argued, because many if not most South Florida Latinos — who’ve been flocking to the Republican Party in recent years, especially in support of Trump, whom they consider tough on left-wing authoritarian regimes like Cuba's and Venezuela's — find Trump’s conviction reminiscent of what they saw back in Latin America.
“The Hispanic community, especially those who fled communism, it’s not their first brush with weaponizing government to punish political opponents," Trujillo said.
"A lot of them are experiencing it now unfortunately for the first time in the United States.”
Asked if it's appropriate to make such a definitive comparison between Trump's situation and the often severe human rights violations genuine political prisoners have suffered under regimes like Cuba's, Venezuela's, Nicaragua's and Guatemala's, Trujillo said, "I would say yes.
"Justice is supposed to be blind. and institutions are supposed to be independent...In this particular case, the institutions were not independent."
Either way, Trump’s presidential campaign has seen a large bounce of support since last week, taking in tens of millions of dollars from donors. He currently leads Biden in most voter polls for the November presidential election.
