RNC co-chair criticizes Larry Hogan for comment on Donald Trump verdict ahead of election

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan faces an uphill battle to flip a U.S. Senate seat against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and perhaps his own party.

Former President Donald Trump was convicted last week on 34 felony counts related to falsifying records in a scheme during his 2016 campaign to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels. Ahead of the verdict, Hogan said on social media, “Regardless of the results, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process.”

Presented with those comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump defended her father-in-law and declined to say whether the party will back Hogan’s campaign.

“I’ll get back to you on all the specifics monetarily, but what I can tell you as the RNC co-chair, I think he should have never said something like that,” Lara Trump said. “He doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican party at this point.”

The race to replace outgoing Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin will help determine who controls the Senate, where Democrats hold a 51-49 majority.

“What I’ll tell you is that of course we want to win as a party, but that is a shame, and he should have thought long and hard before he said that publicly,” Lara Trump said.

In the state’s 2024 primary last month, Donald Trump won 77% of the vote, while Nikki Haley, who was no longer in the race, took votes from 23% of GOP voters.

Trump has a sentencing hearing scheduled for July 11, and the charge of falsifying business records is a Class E felony in New York, the lowest tier of felony charges in the state that are punishable by up to four years in prison at a judge’s discretion, according to The Associated Press.