GOP Attorney General Ashley Moody: Now an ardent critic of Biden and a strong defender of Trump

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody addresses a news conference in South Florida on Nov. 2, 2023, in Boynton Beach. Source: Screenshot/Florida Channel

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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody this week contributed her prestige to a brief defending Donald Trump’s claim to immunity against the various prosecutions against him, including for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election that turfed him out of office.

The 54-page brief, written for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and joined by Moody and 16 other red-state attorneys general, accuses the Biden administration of persecuting his leading opponent in the presidential election this fall.

That’s just the latest salvo in the trajectory of Moody’s time as chief legal officer in Florida. She began her job in 2019.

“I did not campaign to be the attorney general to play politics with this office,” Moody declared at the end of her first year as Florida’s elected attorney general. “In my term as attorney general I will never do the bidding of anyone except the people of the state of Florida.”

That assertion, delivered in an interview with Politico, seems quaint now that she is in her second term as Florida’s attorney general.

That a politician — especially one mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in 2026 — might engage in politics is hardly surprising. Yet Moody has established herself as a dedicated soldier in the MAGA army behind Donald Trump, himself fighting criminal charges.

Former prosecutor, judge

Moody’s office in Tallahassee has not yet responded to a request for comment. She is a former federal prosecutor and state trial judge who has supported Trump’s reelection and not only disagrees with Joe Biden on policy but has ascribed to him the worst motives imaginable, including that he is “aiding and abetting” an immigrant “invasion.”

For example, on Jan. 26, Moody stated on X (formerly Twitter):  “Texas and Florida are fighting to stop the invasion. @JoeBiden is aiding and abetting it.”

Former Republican President Donald Trump is shown in June 2023 in Columbus, Ga. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

And on Tuesday, the day of the GOP presidential primary election, Moody said on X: “Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on becoming Florida’s GOP Presidential Nominee. Looking forward to our resounding victory in November!”

Moody also has bestowed lavish praise on Gov. Ron DeSantis and his policies on immigration, abortion, and criminal justice. As a member of the independently elected Florida Cabinet, Moody has supported the governor in selecting agency heads and setting environmental policy.

Here’s what an attorney general of Florida does, based on Moody’s official webpage:

“The Attorney General is the statewide elected official directed by the Florida Constitution to serve as the chief legal officer for the State of Florida. The Attorney General is responsible for protecting Florida consumers from various types of fraud and enforcing the state’s antitrust laws. Additionally, the Attorney General protects her constituents in cases of Medicaid fraud, defends the state in civil litigation cases, and represents the people of Florida when criminals appeal their convictions in state and federal courts.

“Within the Attorney General’s Office is the Office of Statewide Prosecution that targets widespread criminal activities throughout Florida including identity theft, drug trafficking and gang activity. The Attorney General’s Office also conducts various programs to assist victims of crime.”

What the brief says about Trump’s immunity claim

The U.S. Supreme Court has set oral arguments for April 25, halting trial court proceedings in a prosecution brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. The trial judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit both have rejected Trump’s sweeping immunity claims.

The Trump amicus, or friend of the court, brief argues that the Biden Justice Department is prosecuting the former president to damage his reelection campaign. That’s the view that Moody has now endorsed.

“The basic design of the unitary executive bears heavily on the present matter. [Smith’s] theory would enable a faction to issue credible threats of life imprisonment to a sitting president. It would be surprising if the Founders structured the presidency to counteract factions yet left it so susceptible to their capture,” the brief says.

Instead, “the president would be restrained by a limited tenure and liability to removal. These checks are not ripe for abuse because they are vested in the nation as a whole: The people elect the president, and the people (through their representatives) can remove him.”

The lower courts that ruled against Trump’s immunity claim “underestimated the risk of a torrent of politically motivated prosecutions on the ground that this is the first time since the Founding that a former president has been federally indicted,” the brief argues.

“Glaringly absent is the fact this case is the second of two federal prosecutions against President Trump, who also faces two state prosecutions. How can the risk possibly appear slight?”

‘Should be embarrassed’

Bob Jarvis, a professor of constitutional law at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law, dismissed the AGs’ brief on Trump’s immunity claim as “just a political riff, claiming that any prosecution of Trump is politically motivated and therefore illegitimate. It has no legal arguments. There’s nothing serious about the brief and everyone who signed onto it should be embarrassed (as should the law schools that gave them their law degrees).”

Trump argues that he could be prosecuted only following his impeachment and conviction in Congress. The attorneys general brief adopts that same position. That includes Moody.

The document refers to “irregularities” in state prosecutions against Trump, including press briefings by Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor Fani Willis in her state RICO case against Trump and associates for trying to subvert that state’s 2020 presidential voting and her relationship with a prosecutor she brought into the case.

It also accuses Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of prosecuting Trump for paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

The brief categorizes New York Attorney General Letitia James’ prosecution of Trump for business fraud — which resulted in a $355 million judgement against him, which with interest has grown to $454 million and a bar on conducting business in that state, according to The New York Times.

And it accuses the Justice Department of holding Trump to a higher standard in the classified documents case than it held Hillary Clinton and President Biden. It doesn’t mention that they cooperated with their investigations while Trump allegedly obstructed his own. Ot that Trump stands accused of unprecedented abuses of office.

Trump is being treated this way because “he is the leading candidate in the 2024 election,” the brief asserts.

Hard line against Biden

As for Moody, she has participated in a number of legal actions related to President Joe Biden, including ones accusing the Biden administration of an “authoritarian” COVID policy and threatening to withhold federal transportation money over an antiunion law.

In November 2020, Moody joined with other Republican attorneys general who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

She’s ardently defended Gov. DeSantis’ flights of asylum seekers from Texas — before they got any chance to come to Florida — to states including Massachusetts and California.

In March 2023, Moody joined with the attorneys general of 22 other states in protesting a Biden administration move to lift federal regulatory protection for campus groups that discriminate based on religious beliefs.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press conference at a U.S. Border Patrol station on Jan. 8, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

In February that same year, Moody signed on to another GOP AGs’ letter demanding the resignation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The letter accused Mayorkas of refusing to control the border and adding, “[T]he only explanation is that you have consciously and intentionally caved to the far-left mob that has hijacked this administration from our vacant president.”

That January, Moody joined in an eight-state lawsuit challenging a Biden administration program that allows children from three Central American countries to enter the United States and possibly qualify for residency.

Furthermore, following the 2020 presidential election Moody joined a friend-of-the court brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court overrule presidential election returns in four states and let those states’ legislatures decide the outcome.

The episode, in December 2023, was an important chapter in Trump’s attempt to retain the office he’d won in what the courts ultimately determined was a fair election.

It prompted a written statement that same day from then-Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried — now chair of the Florida Democratic Party.  “It’s disappointing, but predictable, that Florida’s attorney general isn’t acting in the interest of the people she was elected to serve, but in self-interest to a president who lost an election and cannot face the reality of his defeat,” Fried said.

Additionally, she has sought to cut state funding to Planned Parenthood, defended the state’s 15-week abortion ban (still pending before the Florida Supreme Court and which, if the court approves it, would usher in a six-week ban), and has urged that court to keep a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights off the November ballot.

This week, Moody asked the court to hear additional arguments regarding whether the state Constitution’s language enshrining the right of a “natural person” …  “to enjoy and defend life” should block the amendment.

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