House Republicans on Thursday attacked the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, who was convicted last month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Meanwhile, Democrats accused GOP lawmakers of spreading disinformation in an effort to interfere with local prosecutions and protect Trump.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing, the first by Congress since Trump's guilty verdict, to examine Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president. The hearing, however, only featured legal experts with no direct link to the case and repeated popular talking points from members of both parties.

The hearing came on the same day Trump visited Capitol Hill for the first time since the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks there to meet with Republican lawmakers.

“Alvin Bragg's prosecution of President Trump was personal,” said committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. “It was based on politics, and it was wrong.”

Witnesses called by the Republican majority supported their claims that the case and verdict were unjust.

“The left has prioritized its hatred of President Trump above the rule of law,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said. “To put it plainly, the left hates President Trump more than they love this country.”

Trey Trainor, a Trump-appointed commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, said the Justice Department should have intervened to prevent a state prosecutor from enforcing federal election laws, noting the DOJ had previously investigated Trump’s role in a hush money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 election and did not pursue charges.

“Bragg has effectively usurped the jurisdiction that this Congress has explicitly reserved for federal authorities,” Trainor said. “This overreach sets a troubling precedent for the politicization of legal proceedings at the state level.”

And Elizabeth Price Foley, a constitutional lawyer, said the trial violated Trump’s due process, including by not clarifying until the jury was given its deliberating instructions what underlying crime the former president was being accused of violating. 

Falsifying business records alone would have been a misdemeanor, but altering them in coordination with another offense elevated the charges to felonies. Prosecutors left open a menu of underlying crimes they might have cited but ultimately accused Trump of trying to cover up violations of state election law.

“This is a travesty of justice,” Foley said. “It's clearly a violation of due process.”

At one point, Foley suggested Republicans respond to what she called “lawfare” by Democrats by “engaging in lawfare of our own.”

Trump, who still faces three other criminal indictments, has, too, suggested he could retaliate, saying last week it's “very possible” that criminal prosecutions are “going to have to happen” to his political enemies under the next president and that he would have “every right to go after them” if he returns to the White House.

After Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., told her, “I hope we don’t do that,” Foley argued, “There’s good lawfare, and there’s bad lawfare.”

But Norm Eisen, a senior fellow of government studies at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic under ex-President Barack Obama, said he attended the trial every day and found it to be fair. 

“The jurors got it right,” said Eisen, who was invited to testify by Democrats on the committee. 

Eisen argued Trump is not being unfairly and politically targeted, noting his research found that charges of falsifying of business records have been prosecuted about 10,000 times in New York since 2015.

“Mr. Trump should not be treated any differently — no better, no worse than those other defendants who falsified documents,” Eisen said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, pushed back against a slew of misleading Republican claims about the case, many of which were repeated during the hearing. Among them were that Judge Juan Merchan told the jury its verdict did not need to be unanimous, that the Justice Department colluded with Bragg in the case by planting a former DOJ official in the Manhattan DA’s office and that Merchan prevented a witness Trump’s defense team wanted to call from testifying.

The judge instructed the jury that its verdict on each count needed to unanimous but that they did not all need to agree on which method of “unlawful means” they thought Trump used in trying to affect the election. There is no evidence the DOJ placed prosecutor Matthew Colangelo in Manhattan. And Merchan did not block campaign finance expert Bradley Smith from testifying. Trump’s lawyers declined to call him to testify after Merchan ruled Smith could not give his interpretation of federal election laws.

“Republican attacks, one after another, lack any basis in truth or fact,” Nadler said. “My colleagues across the aisle know this, and yet they repeat their attacks ad nausea because that is the only play left in their playbook.”

Bragg and Colangelo have agreed to testify before the committee July 12, a day after Trump is scheduled to be sentenced.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., cast doubt upon whether they would appear and made a motion to issue them a subpoena. 

“I worry that … we may end up there in July, right after sentencing, with an empty Alvin Bragg nameplate and an empty Matthew Colangelo nameplate, and then we'll start the process again on letters and subpoenas and accommodation,” he said. 

Gaetz eventually dropped the request, with both Jordan and Nadler arguing it was unnecessary because the prosecutors have already said they planned to testify.