Another of Donald Trump’s GOP allies gets indicted for fraud and resigns from office

| 11:55 pm EDT August 31, 2018
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In the past month we’ve seen two Republicans in Congress, both close allies of Donald Trump, separately indicted on charges of financial misdeeds. It’s raised the question of whether this is the start of a trend. Today, yet another of Trump’s GOP allies has been indicted on financial charges, this time in Arkansas, and in this instance he’s resigned over it.

Arkansas State Senator Jeremy Hutchinson didn’t exactly have a national profile until he was indicted today on wire fraud charges, which led to his resignation. But Jeremy Hutchinson’s uncle Asa Hutchinson is much more well known, as he’s the Governor of Arkansas. Just a few months ago Donald Trump bent over backward to endorse Asa in his Republican primary race for reelection, making clear that there is an alliance between the Hutchinson political family and Team Trump. To be clear, this alliance is something of a recent one, as Asa Hutchinson blasted Trump in early 2016, asserting that the GOP “cannot allow Donald Trump to take everything we stand for and throw it away.”

So what’s really going on here? First we saw U.S. Congressman Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, indicted and arrested for insider trading. Then weeks later we saw U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter, the second member of Congress to endorse Trump, indicted for campaign finance abuse. At the time, Palmer Report asked if this was a coincidence, or if the finances of Trump’s GOP allies were being investigated in general, and we were left to wonder if or when the next shoe might drop. Now we have a Republican State Senator, whose Governor Uncle has recently become closely allied with Donald Trump, getting indicted by the Feds for financial fraud.

Is this still all just a coincidence, or are the Feds indeed looking into Donald Trump’s allies in office, to see which of them might be criminals? We wouldn’t bother drawing a line from Jeremy Hutchinson to Donald Trump if not for the fact that he’s the third Trump-aligned Republican office holder to get indicted on financial charges this month. Where is all this going? Stay tuned.