Hawley, Schmitt silent after Trump warns of ‘potential death & destruction’ if charged

Missouri’s two Republican U.S. senators, who have criticized the potential arrest of former President Donald Trump, were silent on Friday after Trump raised the possibility of violence if he is prosecuted.

Trump in a social media post overnight questioned, without naming him, how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, could charge him knowing “that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” Bragg is widely expected to ask a New York grand jury to indict Trump on charges related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A spokesperson for Sen. Eric Schmitt declined to comment and a spokesperson for Sen. Josh Hawley didn’t respond to a request for comment. The silence comes despite both senators reacting when Trump posted last weekend that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday – a prediction that didn’t come to pass.

“The reported upcoming arrest of President Trump by hyper partisan Soros prosecutor Alvin Bragg is some Third World Banana Republic lunacy and a very, very dangerous road to go down,” Schmitt tweeted last week, referring to the philanthropist George Soros, a favorite target of Republicans.

Hawley tweeted last week that Democrats “want to arrest Trump, their leading political opponent. They are the banana republic party.”

Looming over Trump’s suggestion that violence could follow charges is the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of Biden’s election victory. The U.S. House impeached Trump for inciting the insurrection in the wake of the attack but the U.S. Senate didn’t convict him.

Hawley and Schmitt each played a role in supporting attempts to overturn the election. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to certifying Biden’s victory and raised his fist in solidarity with crowd of Trump supporters outside the Capitol ahead of the riot . Schmitt, as Missouri state attorney general, supported litigation to overturn the presidential election results in four swing states that went for Democratic President Joe Biden.

Spokespeople for Kansas’ two Republican senators, Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran, also didn’t comment on Friday.

Neither Marshall, who voted against certifying Biden’s victory, nor Moran appear to have spoken publicly about the potential criminal case against Trump since the former president predicted his own arrest.

“I’m late for a speaking engagement, we’ll tweet something in a little while,” Marshall told The Star on Tuesday.

As of Friday afternoon, Marshall hadn’t tweeted anything.

The Star’s Daniel Desrochers contributed reporting