Nye GOP Chairman: ‘A sad day in America’
In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction, members of the Nye County Republican Party are standing by the 45th president, according to party chairman Leo Blundo.
The Nye County Republican Party will “move heaven and earth to deliver Nye County and the rest of Nevada for the triumphant return of Donald J. Trump and America First candidates who will support his plan to save America,” Blundo said in a statement after a New York jury found Trump guilty last week of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of his 2016 election.
Blundo called the decision a “sad day in America.”
“If you look at the entirety of the situation, I think it’s wrong,” Blundo told the Pahrump Valley Times. “I don’t like how the justice system is being used to persecute people, political folks. I saw a case where a Democrat got persecuted and I thought that was wrong, so the political persecution goes both ways. It’s a sad day in America when political purposes are the driving force for why people are being persecuted in the justice system. It perverts the justice system, and no matter what your political affiliation is, it’s wrong. Whether it’s your gender, your race, or your nationality, it doesn’t matter. When we use these ambitions, and we use these tools in that manner. I think it’s wrong.”
Laws matter
Others had a different opinion.
Bill Dolan, a longtime law enforcement officer and veteran from Pahrump, suggested that no one should be entitled to special treatment once arrested, charged and convicted.
“As a prior law enforcement officer, nobody is above the law,” he said. “The rule of law needs to stand. If it was any one of us, we should receive no different treatment than anyone else, but it’s when you have people like Rep. Tim Scott, Rep. JD Vance, and others running around saying that they are not going to move any legislation whatsoever because it didn’t go their way — that is wrong.
They did the same thing for the 2020 election when Trump lost, he said, but they kept denying it.
“Trump lost in court by a jury of his peers and so all of a sudden, it’s everybody’s fault except his. That would not stand for you and I,” Dolan said. “When you say you’re going to tie down all legislation in Washington, you’re hurting everybody.”
Dolan says that the situation affects the many bills that the Disabled American Veterans organization have pending in the House and the Senate.
“I host a couple of high offices with Disabled American Veterans out of national that disturbs me,” he said. “They’re essentially saying that even veterans’ issues don’t matter to them. It’s disturbing that they would do this because they can’t accept a decision that they lost.”
How it all began
Trump’s May 30, conviction in New York stemmed from a $130,000 hush money payment his then attorney and so-called “fixer” Michael Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election.
Prosecutors said the deal was meant to keep voters in the dark about Daniels’ allegation that she had sex with Trump years earlier, which the former president has categorically denied.
Making history
Trump, whose sentencing hearing is scheduled to take place on July 11, is the first American president ever to be convicted of a felony.
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes
