foil their future elections most recently that was the complaint of brazils former president luis inacio lula da silva after he was jailed before the 2018 election silva was freed by his countrys supreme court and won back the presidency in october whats notable in trumps case however is that his own party is echoing the stolen election claims ahead of the next campaign house speaker kevin mccarthy last month said he was directing his partys committee chairs to investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions that a whole party is carrying this line is somewhat unusual levitsky said last weeks charges in new york court stemmed from trumps reimbursements to his lawyer at the time michael cohen of hush money paid in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election to porn actress stormy daniels who alleged they had an affair even some critics of trump have seen the charges as a stretch of new york laws the heart of the manhattan case is prosecutors claim that trump falsified business records at his company to make the payoff in order to keep a potentially damaging story quiet while he was campaigning an illegal attempt by trump they argued to try to influence the election the former president also faces legal jeopardy from other investigations two of which are related to his attempts to try to interfere with the 2020 election prosecutors in fulton county georgia are probing trumps january 2021 call to the states top elections officer asking him to find enough votes to declare trump the winner there the us justice department also has launched a federal special counsel probe into trumps attempts to try to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election trump is also enmeshed in a federal special counsel investigation of his handling of classified documents found at his florida estate manhattan district attorney alvin bragg when asked at a news conference on tuesday whether the timing of the case was political responded by saying i bring cases when theyre ready braggs office declined to comment on trumps statements about election interference as did the department of justice critics warn that trump is once again sewing suspicions of fraud that could damage democracy weve seen this film before joanna lydgate chief executive officer of states united action which tracks politicians who embrace trumps election lies said in a statement we know this is dangerous because we all saw what happened on january 6th trump has routinely waved off such warnings and has seamlessly integrated his current legal jeopardy into the false allegations hes made for three years about democratic party wrongdoing leading to his ouster in his first campaign rally in waco texas days before the manhattan indictment trump railed against all the investigations and said that his opponents were using the probes because its harder for them to stuff the ballot boxes of which they stuffed plenty the new weapon