MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Just like the GOP presidential candidates on the debate stage last week, public officials who have gotten behind Donald Trump’s latest bid for the presidency are having to grapple with the question of whether their support will continue should the former president be convicted in one or more of the criminal cases now pending against him.
For Congressman Jerry Carl that answer is a resounding yes.
As did every other Alabamian Republican congressman, Carl, who represents Alabama’s 1st Congressional District, endorsed Trump on Aug. 4, just hours before the former president took the stage in Montgomery for a state GOP fundraiser at the Renaissance Convention Center.
On APT’s Capitol Journal, Congressman Jerry Carl argued that while he believed Trump was likely to be convicted on at least two batches of federal charges levied against him – those out of New York and Georgia – both will likely be thrown out were they to reach the Supreme Court.
“There’s little doubt in my mind that he’s going to be convicted in New York and Georgia, I think they will convict him, it’s when it gets to the Supreme Court (that) it’s going to be kicked out,” Carl said.
Watch the full interview below.
In New York, Trump was indicted on felony charges stemming from hush payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. His indictment in Georgia, which produced the now infamous mugshot after turning himself into an Atlanta jail last week, stems from his alleged efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia during the 2020 election, with Trump telling state election officials during a phone call “I have to find 12,000 votes.”
Carl responded to that specifically.
“Something as simple as ‘you’ve got to find me some more votes,’ I don’t know of an elected official in the world that was behind that hadn’t said that, I mean that’s pretty common conversation. ‘You’ve got to find us more votes,’ that’s almost a desperate plea that we’ve all said before.”
Carl said he believed that both cases would likely be thrown out, as Trump’s actions in both the New York and Georgia indictments were protected under the First Amendment.
“I think so much of this is riding on the First Amendment, and I think as a country, if we don’t push back on this, what we’re going to see is they’ll start chipping away everybody’s rights,” he said.
“That’s the part that really disturbs me the most; they’re using Trump as the whipping tool right now, and god bless him, I don’t know how he’s doing what he’s doing. If they can do it to Trump, they can do it to anybody. It’s a First Amendment rights issue to me because what he said is what they’re trying to prosecute him on.”
Carl said that he was the last member of the Republican U.S. House from Alabama to be approached with the proposal for a unified endorsement of Trump, and that after some “very positive conversations” with Trump on the phone, he felt confident in giving the former president his public support.
“I felt much better when I got off the phone,” he said. “They made sure we were there when he landed, we rode in his caravan, we all rode together to the event, we spent time with him behind the scenes, and we did it for a reason.”
In those discussions among the six Republican U.S. House members, Carl said he ultimately joined in the endorsement “to show unity in the state of Alabama.” He also said that the GOP fundraiser headlined by Trump that kicked off just hours after announcing the joint endorsement left him “shocked.”
“Trump has got that magic, he’s like Elvis Presley… Elvis could walk into a room and it was just like electricity; Donald Trump has that charismatic side about him,” he said.
“I was shocked when I got to Montgomery, I was not expecting what we saw when we got there, and when I say that, I’m talking about the room full of people and the excitement that was in that room. It was like a rock concert, and he did a great job.”