FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., led 28 other Republicans in a scathing rebuke of Attorney General Merrick Garland and the New York “show trial” against former President Trump.

“The conviction of President Trump in Manhattan is nothing short of the evisceration of the American judicial process,” the lawmaker wrote in a Wednesday letter. “In their zeal to imprison Donald Trump, Democrat prosecutors successfully dissolved the constitutional protections afforded to defendants and the barriers that protect every American from the abuses of arbitrary rule.”

The majority of the Senate Republican conference signed onto the condemnation, including all three contenders for GOP leader in the next Congress, Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., and Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records by a New York jury last month in a controversial trial, during which he was subject to a gag order.

The lawmakers claimed the former president’s right to due process was violated in the process of his trial. “Even if we disregard Judge Juan Merchan’s financial contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, the prosecutors were permitted to convert alleged time-lapsed business records misdemeanors into felonies because the records violations were supposedly in furtherance of a second crime. Yet, even after the jury rendered its verdict, we do not know what constitutes that specific second crime,” Paul wrote. The Republicans accused the trial of marking “the attempt to imprison a leader of the loyal opposition,” further condemning it for threatening “the existence of due process of law, without which a constitutional republic dedicated to the protection of individual liberty is not possible.”

(CLICK HERE FOR LETTER TO AG) Garland-re-New-York-Case

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