TIM SCOTT, AMERICA’S ONLY BLACK REPUBLICAN SENATOR, has a message for other black people: Stop whining about systemic oppression, stop demonizing law enforcement, and take responsibility for your actions.
But for Republicans, Scott has a very different message: Getting arrested and prosecuted isn’t your fault. The criminal justice system is rigged against you.
Racial disparities in policing are a well-established phenomenon. Scott knows all about it, including from personal experience. Four years ago, he told colleagues that he had been stopped by police 18 times in the previous two decades. He said that in one case, he was stopped as he tried to enter the Senate chamber wearing an official pin that identified him as a senator.
In 2020, Scott negotiated with Democrats on legislation that would have banned chokeholds, funded body cameras, and taken other steps to improve law enforcement. But he cautioned progressives not to foment black distrust of police. He accused the left of “tearing this country apart, making it a binary choice between law enforcement and communities of color.” If progressives kept vilifying police, he warned, “more people in the communities of color will have less confidence in the institutions of power and authority in this nation.”
Last year, in his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Scott ran as a black man who would “back the blue” and discredit allegations of systemic racism. He conceded the existence of bigots, but he emphasized: “Are the systems of our country racist? I don’t think so.” In speeches and interviews, Scott accused the left of “demonizing law enforcement officers,” and he defended the criminal justice system. “Every law enforcement officer in this country deserves our respect and our admiration,” he insisted.
In a Newsmax op-ed in November, Scott derided the idea that American institutions were rigged in favor of white people. He scorned progressives who “see systemic racism and microaggressions around every corner” and who peddled the myth that “we live in a systemically racist country.” He castigated Democrats for trying “to inflame and divide America on racial lines” and “getting communities hooked on the drug of victimhood.”
But when the putative targets of discrimination are Republicans, Scott says just the opposite. He spews and wallows in paranoia.
In August, after Donald Trump’s second federal indictment—the one alleging that he violated federal laws in his schemes to overturn the 2020 election—Scott responded by accusing the Justice Department of partisan bias. In a tweet, he decried “the weaponization of [President Joe] Biden’s DOJ and its immense power used against political opponents. What we see today are two different tracks of justice. One for political opponents and another for the son of the current president.” In a second tweet, Scott added: “We’re watching Biden’s DOJ continue to hunt Republicans, while protecting Democrats.”
Since then, Scott has continued to accuse DOJ, the IRS, and other agencies of political persecution. Two weeks ago, when Special Counsel Robert Hur issued a report concluding that Biden shouldn’t be prosecuted for his handling of classified documents, Scott told Fox News that “the system we face is one for Republicans, one for Democrats, weaponizing the Department of Justice.” And this week on Face the Nation, Scott claimed that the various civil and criminal cases against Trump have “exposed the two-tiered justice system that many Americans fear. You have a justice system that hunts Republicans, while protecting Democrats. . . . You have courts actually targeting and running after Republicans.”
This propaganda against DOJ is manifestly false. There’s a simple case that shows how phony it is—and how cynically Scott applies his racial double standard.
On June 1, after a preliminary investigation, DOJ issued a letter informing former Vice President Mike Pence that he wouldn’t be charged for having retained classified documents at his home. The reason was obvious: Unlike Trump, who had obstructed the government’s efforts to recover classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, Pence had handed over his documents willingly.
On its face, the department’s decision about Pence seemed to be pretty good evidence that Trump—who was then under investigation for concealing documents, though he hadn’t yet been indicted for it—wasn’t being pursued for partisan reasons. If DOJ had been systematically targeting Republicans, Pence would have been prosecuted.
On June 3, Scott spoke at a fundraising event in Iowa. He didn’t mention the Pence case. He certainly didn’t say that it discredited the myth of systemic DOJ partisanship. But Scott did say that his own life discredited the myth of systemic racism. “The truth of my life disproves the lies of the radical left,” he told the crowd. In a Newsmax interview, Scott added: “I am living proof that America can do for anyone what she’s done for me.”
Two days later on The View, Scott was challenged on this point. When he argued that his success in politics wasn’t exceptional, cohost Sunny Hostin pointed out that Scott was the first black Republican sent to Congress from South Carolina in 114 years. (In fact, he’s only the second black Republican senator ever elected by a vote of the people in any state.) Another cohost, Ana Navarro, pointed out that although African Americans made up more than 13 percent of the U.S. population, only three senators were black.
Scott brushed that observation aside. “That is only one statistic,” he argued.
Then, on June 8, Trump was indicted in the Mar-a-Lago case. The indictment presented extensive evidence that he had obstructed justice. So within the space of a week, DOJ had issued findings from investigations of two prominent Republicans for retaining classified documents. And the department was bringing charges only against the Republican who had obstructed recovery of the documents.
Statistically, one out of two is what you’d expect from a coin flip. And the Trump indictment, when contrasted with the Pence letter, made it clear that criminal conduct, not party, was the decisive difference. There was no basis to infer persecution of Republicans.
But that’s exactly what Scott inferred. In a fair system of justice, “Republicans are not hunted,” he told Fox News on June 9. “What we’ve seen over the last several years is the weaponization of the Department of Justice against the former president. . . . What we see is a justice system where the scales are weighted.”
That’s Tim Scott. He thinks indicting one out of two Republicans who kept classified documents is damning, but electing three black people to a Senate of one hundred isn’t. He thinks one black man’s success disproves systemic racism, but one Republican’s exoneration doesn’t disprove allegations of partisan prosecution. And he’s happy to go on TV and tell Americans that the criminal justice system is rigged. But only against his party.
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