AG Bailey uses Trump shooting to demand dismissal of former president’s felony conviction 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks with James Lawson, a longtime friend and his campaign manager. // Courtesy Photo

Missouri Attorney General (AG) Andrew Bailey, a conservative Republican, announced that he has filed an amicus brief with a New York court urging the overturning of former President Donald Trump’s conviction in a hush money and election interference case.

To make this weirder, Bailey references the assassination attempt on Trump in a press release announcing the amicus brief as a justifying reason to vacate the guilty verdicts.

Trump, who is now the official Republican Party nominee for the presidency, was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to silence the adult film star Stormy Daniels from speaking about an affair the two had in 2006 at Lake Tahoe.

The prosecutors for the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg were able to convince a jury that illegally falsifying business records aided Trump’s 2016 election.

However, that is old news. Bailey, along with other MAGA attorneys general, argue that the conviction was politically motivated and linked to the Biden White House and the U.S. Department of Justice. There is no substantial evidence that supports this claim. Lack of evidence be damned, though. AG Bailey now relies on a day of great national tragedy to further justify his obsession with violating a state’s sovereign judicial system.

“[Americans] watched in horror as President Trump was shot in the head and nearly killed at a campaign rally,” Bailey said in the press release. Proving himself to be even more of a political opportunist than Trump, Bailey capitalized on the panic around the attempt on the former president’s life more so than really any Republican in Missouri. In the press release, Bailey goes on to characterize the conviction reached by a jury of twelve common New Yorkers as a “political witch hunt” that is “replete with legal error.”

“Missouri will not sit idly by while New York destroys the rule of law,” Bailey alleges, via the press release. The amicus brief only mentions instances of the assassination attempt only a few times. However, much of the brief to vacate the conviction is a rag of far-right conspiracy theories about how Trump is supposedly a political prisoner and a victim.

“[At] a political rally, a sniper attempted to assassinate President Trump while he was delivering remarks,” the amicus brief states. “Fortunately the sniper failed, though tragically at least one member of the crowd was shot and killed, and several others were injured.”

While citing the tragedy, the attorneys representing Bailey’s office audaciously blame “the tenor of political discourse” of the country and calls on the judge to “change” this tenor. The amicus brief baselessly accuses the state of New York, the court, and the work of District Attorney Bragg for being partly responsible for “bombastic rhetoric and rapidly escalating lawfare [that] can have dire real world consequences.”

It rambles on.

AG Bailey should consider his own “bombastic rhetoric” and “rapidly escalating lawfare.”

The announcement of the amicus brief comes shortly after The Pitch published a feature aggressively questioning the standing of a lawsuit Bailey’s office filed against the state of New York before the U.S. Supreme Court. This lawsuit is an attempt to block sentencing in the case of People of New York v. Donald J. Trump, which was originally scheduled for July 11, but was pushed back by the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, to September of this year. The justification for the delay was so that Merchan could weigh how the U.S. Supreme Court handled a ruling in another case dealing with Trump’s criminality. That ruling expanded presidential immunity significantly to cover virtually all “official acts.”

Nevertheless, there is a consensus among all of the lawyers The Pitch has interviewed that Bailey has simply filed a dubious lawsuit against the state of New York for political gains and to boost his brand of “lawfare.”

Keep in mind, Bailey is running to be the Missouri GOP nominee for the position of state attorney general in Nov. Bailey is up against Will Scharf—an attorney who is currently retained by Donald Trump.

So, in a bid to show off his MAGA cojones, Bailey engages in politically dubious lawsuits based on spurious claims and bigoted assumptions proffered as talking points by the GOP.

Wouldn’t it be a fair argument to call Bailey a hypocrite?

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey during a TV appearance with Mike Huckabee to discuss his investigation into Media Matters. // Photo Courtesy of Bailey’s Campaign

Bailey and the state of Missouri have no sovereign authority over New York, the criminal justice system there, District Attorney Bragg, or New York Attorney General Letitia James. A bevy of academic evidence and Supreme Court case law would suggest to even a layperson that Bailey has absolutely no standing in challenging the conviction of Trump in a criminal case brought by the state of New York. Surely, the guilty verdict in the Trump hush money trial could be overturned or affirmed on appeal in New York.

In no way, though, will that be done due to the actions of Andrew Bailey. On top of that, he’s relying on hundreds of thousands in tax dollars to allow his office’s attorneys and outside counsel to embarrass his home state in courtrooms across the United States.

As previously reported, The Pitch has filed an open records request with Bailey’s office. His office informed us that our request won’t be returned until Sept.

In the open records request, we asked Bailey’s office to review as much information that’s available pertaining to the costs associated with the lawsuit against the state of New York and the planning, its organization, and whether outside groups were involved. In addition, The Pitch filed another open records request more recently regarding Bailey’s amicus brief and his call to overturn the conviction.

Note, we asked for additional information related to the costs of having Bailey’s attorneys work on cases that are highly partisan in nature.

James S. Atkins—First Assistant Attorney General for the state of Missouri—serves as the counsel for the state in the amicus brief. Bailey retained outside counsel as well for that brief: Kent Correll of the Law Office of P. Kent Correll. We asked for information about the compensation Correll is receiving from the office of Attorney General Bailey in this matter.

Correll is a popular attorney among conservative organizations and individuals. His most recent handiwork of note is defending Wayne LaPierre—formerly of the Second Amendment rights powerhouse the National Rifle Association (NRA). LaPierre was just temporarily banned from being involved with the NRA in response to a civil corruption lawsuit brought against NRA by the office of Attorney General James in Aug 2020.

Bailey’s office quoted The Pitch the end of Sept., again, for information requested in the second open records request pertaining to the amicus brief and Kent Correll.