Steve Marshall on Trump trials: Prosecutors should 'follow the facts and not chase people'

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall appeared on ABC News on Thursday to discuss the status of former President Donald Trump’s claim to presidential immunity amid an ongoing legal fight related to alleged hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Marshall questioned the legal bedrock of the case being made by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the political motivations of those involved.

“Let’s look at where power has been abused already,” Marshall said. “It took 30 months for the special prosecutor to bring these charges that relate to facts that have been reported for quite some time. And when we look about the question of delay, whether or not we’re going to have a trial in a timely manner, they don’t need to look at President Trump’s trial team.”

“The question is why the special counsel had to wait so long to bring these charges to begin with?”

Marshall, along with 22 other state attorneys general filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in February supporting former Trump’s request to place a stay on his trial proceedings until the court can first rule on his claim of presidential immunity. When asked if Trump was acting politically or officially as president in the context of his current case, Marshall said the answer is already well established.

“In fact, if you look at the arguments being made before the court, Trump’s legal team specifically said that this immunity claim is not tied to private acts, but only to the official actions of the President, which is entirely consistent with how we’ve treated the president under civil law, to be able to grant absolute immunity relating to their official actions and is broader than simply President Trump,” Marshall said.

“This has to do with the ability of presidents to be able to leave the executive branch without looking over their shoulder. We think that this is an important argument. And in fact, the Special Counsel must believe the same thing, because he attempted to have the Supreme Court to be able to consider it before the D.C. Court of Appeals could weigh in to begin with.”

Later in the interview, Marshall said that Trump didn’t “bring this upon himself” and this is the first time “we’ve had to examine whether or not presidential immunity would apply to a criminal prosecution.” He also drew attention to future attempts by state to bring criminal charges against the former president.

“In fact, it was brought not only by prosecutors who waited many, many months to be able to come forward. But let’s look at also what’s going on in the state of Georgia where we have prosecutors running a campaign on whether or not they’re going to look into Donald Trump.”

“I’ve been a prosecutor now for almost 30 years. My responsibility is to follow the facts and not chase people. What we’ve seen with the efforts around Donald Trump is an effort with a results-driven investigation to try to convict a man — not to allow the facts to dictate where those prosecutions should go,” Marshall said.

Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News.