A new report from Politico's Playbook details how former President Donald Trump reacted with pure fury after being convicted in New York on 34 felony charges.
According to Politico, Trump had a phone call with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) shortly after the conviction in which he was heard "dropping frequent F-bombs" and demanding that something be done to reverse his conviction.
“We have to overturn this,” Trump told Johnson.
The speaker was sympathetic to Trump's plight and Politico reports that he is now putting his weight behind proposals intended to shield Trump from the multiple criminal charges he faces across four different jurisdictions.
"Johnson has also been in talks with Judiciary chair and Trump ally Jim Jordan (R-OH) about using the appropriations process to target special counsel Jack Smith's probe," writes Politico. "It’s an apparent softening of his position: The speaker told us in an interview last month that he found a similar idea by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unworkable; now, he’s actually looking into it."
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However, Republicans such as Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) are dumping on the idea of defunding the special counsel.
"I don't think it's a good idea unless you can show that [the prosecutors] acted in bad faith or fraud or something like that,” he told Politico. “They’re just doing their job — even though I disagree with what they did.”
Another Republican, who wished to remain anonymous, said that defunding Smith would completely undermine the GOP's complaints about Democrats "weaponizing" the justice system.