Former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado) said former President Trump’s hush money trial and sentence set a “dangerous precedent.”
“This is a dangerous precedent. Even if you don’t think that Republican district attorneys and attorneys general are going to turn things around, they will,” Buck said on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday. “And what I’ve seen in Congress is we’ve had two unjust impeachments and we’ve seen Democrats talking about it after the fact.”
Buck, who retired from Congress in a sudden announcement earlier this year, said Republicans are trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and President Biden because “when one does it, the other immediately knows about it.”
“And it’s a terrible slope,” he said.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made history on Thursday by becoming the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. He was found guilty of all 34 felony counts against him for falsifying business records about hush money payments to cover up his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
The ruling plunges the 2024 presidential election into uncharted territory, with both campaigns struggling with how to proceed.
Shortly after the ruling, Trump began fundraising around the announcement and said he planned to appeal.
The judge set the sentencing date for July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention, where Trump is expected to win the party’s nomination. At a news conference after the guilty verdict, Trump said “the real verdict will be handed down by the people on November 5th,” referring to Election Day.
Trump could face prison time, but first-time offenders for similar crimes are rarely jailed.
Buck said he doesn’t think the former president will go to prison.
“I don’t believe he’s going to prison for a white-collar crime like this. I don’t believe that’s the sentence,” Buck said. “When you look at the sentencing history for crimes like this in Manhattan, I don’t believe he’s going to prison.”
