1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

I note that the Virginia Republican Party has condemned Mr Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York. I wish I could say that this surprises me but it speaks to exactly how low the Republican Party has sunk and how far it has strayed from the values of the GOP of my childhood. To recap: Mr Trump committed his crimes in Manhattan. He is entitled to and received a trial by a jury of his peers -- specially, peers wealthy enough and successful enough to be eligible for jury duty in Manhattan. While there would no doubt be jurisdictions more demographically favorable to Mr Trump, it would be folly to pretend that apple farmers in Rochester are more his peers than other NYC high-rise dwellers. Mr Trump was allowed to present a defense both in and outside of the court room. When he repeatedly attacked court staffers and their family members he was placed under a gag order which he repeatedly violated. Any ordinary citizen would have been found in criminal contempt and jailed for the behavior Mr Trump exhibited. Mr Trump was offered the opportunity to testify, under oath, in his own defense. He insists there was no affair. He insists that the business dealings to conceal it were above-board and completely legal. Yet he refused to say so under oath. And finally, Mr Trump was convicted with a unanimous vote of a jury of 12 of his peers. Several of those jury members said they were Fox News viewers. Several said they had Truth Social accounts. By any and all measures, Mr Trump had every opportunity to convince at least one member of that jury that he really was being railroaded -- that the whole thing really was a sham. He did not. He could not. Because it wasn't. For the Virginia Republican Party to come out in defense of the former President after this conviction says one thing and one thing only: that power matters more to Virginia Republicans than the rule of law. That you do not wish to live in a constitutional republic where every person is equal before the law but rather in an plutocracy or autocracy, where slavish devotion to wealth and power dictates who is protected by the law and who is constrained by it. It is shameful. It beneath this great Commonwealth. And it is unamerican.