Donald Trump is the first major-party candidate to seek the presidency despite being convicted of 34 felonies. Those convictions relate to his having an extramarital affair with a porn star and paying her hush money to hide it from voters with an illegal cover-up before the 2016 election.
Even so, Ohio’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Dave Yost, on Aug. 21 called the campaign of Trump and Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, “the law and order” ticket.
As the vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz, was preparing to speak at the Democratic National Convention, Yost posted on X claiming that Walz didn’t measure up from a law-enforcement perspective.
“Later tonight at the #DNC, @Tim_Walz will try to make the case that he should be second-in-command during national & global crises. But Americans remember when Minneapolis literally burned under his watch in 2020. No thanks, I’ll stick with the law & order ticket. #TrumpVance2024”
The post referred to Walz’s leadership in the days after Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd — an unarmed, handcuffed Black man — by kneeling on his neck for at least eight minutes and 15 seconds.
Riots built over two days, and on the evening of May 27, 2020, the city’s mayor and police chief told the governor’s office they’d lost control and needed help. It wasn’t until the following afternoon that Walz activated the National Guard. Trump praised Walz for his response to the unrest.
Jan. 6, 2021
Trump faced unrest himself and he delayed, as president on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capital to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election.
After months of falsely claiming that the election had been stolen, and despite losing 60 court cases challenging the results, Trump urged followers to come to Washington the day Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump said in one of many tweets urging people to come. “Be there, will be wild!”
During the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse, Trump and other speakers made a slew of incendiary declarations. They included Trump falsely telling the crowd that the election was stolen, then saying his listeners should “fight like hell,” and then sending the mob to the Capitol as Congress was trying to certify his defeat.
Trump went back to the White House and watched on television as the mob overwhelmed and beat police with hockey sticks and flagpoles, entered the Capitol, and went hunting for Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One officer died of a stroke, at least 140 were injured, and four died by suicide over the following months.
Certification of the election was delayed as the entire United States Congress tried to take shelter amid the attack.
For the next 187 minutes, aides begged Trump to call off the mob, but he kept “gleefully watching,” in the words of his then-press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
During that critical three-hour period, Trump tweeted about his own vice president, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country…”
Pence had refused to obey Trump’s illegal demand that he delay certifying their loss. Secret Service agents were barely able to spirit the vice president to a secure location as the mob waved Trump and Confederate flags, erected a scaffold and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”
On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty in a revised indictment in the Jan. 6 case against him, where he faces federal felony charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
Yost’s defense of Trump
To Ohio Attorney General Yost, those and Trump’s other indictments, convictions and losses in civil court are “lawfare.”
Yost is planning to run for governor in 2026 and his state office referred questions about his “law and order” post to the Yost campaign.
“Attorney General Yost’s endorsement of the Trump/Vance ticket as the ‘law and order ticket’ reflects his broader belief in their commitment to policies and principles that align with his views on law enforcement and public safety,” spokeswoman Amy Natoce said in an email. “To compare the lawfare being waged against President Trump to the clear policy failures of the Harris/Walz ticket is not only misleading, but absurd.”
Regarding public safety, the rate of violent crime in America has dropped precipitously since the early 1990s. It bumped back up somewhat during the coronavirus pandemic, and has now started dropping once again as the economic and social dislocation caused by COVID has eased. Violent crime in the United States is currently near a 50-year low.
Trump’s other legal troubles
Regarding Trump’s personal record, the former president has an extensive history of run-ins with the legal system.
Trump is also the only U.S. president and only federal official to be impeached twice.
In May 2023, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. In January 2024, another jury ruled Trump had to pay $83.3 million in damages for defamation after denying he sexually assaulted Carroll.
In February 2024, a New York court entered a $350 million civil-fraud judgment against Trump for wildly overvaluing properties to get better interest and insurance rates. Trump was barred from serving as an officer or director of any corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years.
Yost slammed that verdict as “weaponizing justice,” but the Ohio AG wouldn’t say if it was OK for people in the Buckeye State to file phony financial documents the way Trump did in New York.
In June 2023, a grand jury charged Trump with 37 felonies in connection with his removal of classified documents from the White House and refusal to cooperate in returning them, but Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump, dismissed the case this past July. Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked an appeals court to overturn Cannon’s dismissal.
In 2019, Trump stalled military aid to Ukraine, which was threatened with invasion by Vladimir Putin. Trump dangled the aid as he pressured the Ukrainian president for political help. Trump asked for “a favor” by helping him find dirt on Biden’s son just as the former vice president appeared likely to run against Trump the following year. This matter was the subject of Trump’s first impeachment. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were the subject of his second impeachment.
Trump’s statements conflicting with the rule of law
Outside the legal system, Trump has made headlines for statements that conflict with traditional respect for the rule of law in America. Last December, Trump said he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for day one.” In 2022, he called for the “termination” of the most basic law of them all — the U.S. Constitution — over his disappointment at losing the 2020 election.
In a book about his time serving in the Trump administration, former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Trump asked during a June 2020 Oval Office meeting with advisers whether U.S. military troops could shoot demonstrators protesting racial injustice outside the White House.
And just last Tuesday, Trump’s campaign appeared to violate federal law by holding a campaign activity at Arlington National Cemetery. The Army said campaign operatives abused a cemetery staffer who said they berated her and shoved her aside as she tried to stop them from bringing photo equipment into a prohibited area.
Trump’s campaign responded by questioning her mental health and claiming it wasn’t a campaign stop for Trump — even though the campaign disseminated photos of a broadly smiling Trump giving the thumbs-up among the headstones of fallen soldiers.
Yost on the border and immigration
To justify calling Trump the “law and order,” candidate, Yost and his campaign made a misleading statement about Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the border, and undocumented immigrants.
“As border czar, or in whatever capacity she now claims, Kamala Harris has completely disregarded our laws and allowed more than 10 million illegal migrants to cross our borders, many of whom are dangerous criminals now terrorizing communities across our nation, including right here in Ohio,” Natoce said in her email. “Her blatant disregard of the law puts American citizens in significant danger. And let’s not forget when she praised the ‘defund the police’ movement in 2020, right after Minneapolis literally burned under Gov. Walz’s watch.”
Harris was never appointed “border czar,” a term used by some media outlets but not by the Biden administration when it tasked Harris with investigating the root causes of migration from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
To support the claim that migrants are “terrorizing our communities,” the Yost campaign email linked to a Fox News story about thousands of Haitians arriving in Springfield over the past five years. It detailed a TV interview with the Springfield mayor.
It quoted him saying the city’s housing and infrastructure were strained by the influx and that, “It’s taxing public safety.” The word “terror” — or even a specific crime — were never mentioned.
Research indicates that both legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants are substantially less likely to commit crime than the native born, and the Yost campaign produced no evidence to the contrary.
Meanwhile, anti-immigrant rhetoric has been linked to violence. Experts say that whipping up fears of an “immigrant invasion” and “terror” and conspiracy theories of a “great replacement” have helped motivate racist massacres over the past six years in El Paso, Buffalo and Pittsburgh.
Despite Yost’s claims of terror, the New York Times on Tuesday published a story about Springfield saying that for the most part, Haitian immigrants have been good for the city.
“By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield,” it said. “They are assembling car engines at Honda, running vegetable-packing machines at Dole and loading boxes at distribution centers. They are paying taxes on their wages and spending money at Walmart. On Sundays they gather at churches for boisterous, joyful services in Haitian Creole.”
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: [email protected]. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.
