'Crazies are incentivized': Trump's ex-lawyer sounds alarm over 'demented' claims

Donald Trump and his Republican allies are encouraging violence against law enforcement with claims that his criminal prosecutions are politically motivated "scams," according to experts — including one of the former president's attorneys.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee was convicted last month on 34 felony counts involving business fraud and has three other felony cases yet to come to trial.

And congressional Republicans have raised concerns by joining his blistering attacks on the criminal justice system, reported The Guardian.

“It’s hardly unusual for convicted politicians to say they’ve been charged for political reasons,” said Harvard government professor Steven Levitsky, who co-authored the book How Democracies Die.

“What’s different here and very important is that in healthy democracies most mainstream politicians distance themselves from such attacks. The GOP has gotten to the point where most Republican leaders are echoing Trump’s charges of a rigged justice system.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been among the GOP lawmakers backing the former president's false claims about his prosecution and has joined his call to get the U.S. Supreme Court involved. Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb warned those attacks were dangerous.

“The denigration of judges, jurors and prosecutors by Trump is certainly a threat to the rule of law,” said Cobb, a former Justice Department official and White House counsel. “Trump has certainly taken this to a new and lamentable level.”

Trump has repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden for the criminal cases against him and threatened to prosecute him as retribution if re-elected, and Cobb said the GOP frontrunner was stoking violence.

“The suggestion by Trump and his sycophants that the New York case is somehow attributable to Biden is absurd and would be laughable if not so demented and purposeful,” Cobb said. “The Biden administration had no involvement in the charging or presentation of the case and bears no responsibility for it whatsoever."

"Certainly the potential for violence is there," Cobb added. “Crazies are incentivized. Many Trump loyalists are begging Trump lawyers or other Trump insiders to dox the jurors … Violence is a serious possibility.”

Former federal Judge John Jones, now the president of Dickinson College, agreed that violence was possible ahead of sentencing on July 11, and Republican lawmakers were acting irresponsibly by echoing Trump's lies.

“Trump’s rhetoric leading up to his sentencing and after is going to have the propensity to cause unrest and potentially violence," Jones said. “Trump has taken the old axiom that Republicans are the law and order party and he’s turned it on its head, and seems to be doubling down.”