MINOT, N.D. — Is your email inbox as stuffed as mine is with campaign fundraising emails from Gov. Doug Burgum?
It's understandable. Burgum absolutely needs to be on the stage for the GOP's first presidential debate in Milwaukee, in August, and fundraising is a part of the qualification. And how much Burgum raises is less relevant than how many people he raises it from.
He needs 40,000 individual contributors to make the debate stage, with at least 200 contributions coming from each of 20 different states.
This is a quantity-over-quality situation.
But one recent fundraising pitch was of particular interest in that it invokes a topic Burgum has largely tried to avoid in media interviews.
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Namely, the criminal indictments of disgraced former President Donald Trump.
"In America, you are innocent until proven guilty," the subject line of the email pitch reads, though, in keeping with Burgum's habit when he's been asked about Trump in media interviews, the email doesn't mention the former president at all.
"The Department of Justice needs to hold Joe Biden to the same standard for his missing documents. The Justice Department can’t have one standard against Republicans and another against Democrats, and right now, it looks like that’s what they’re doing," the email states (emphasis from the original).
"The law must be applied equally and it will be when I’m President," it continues.
It's a deft bit of politicking.
Trump, who Burgum is campaigning against, remember, continues to dominate his challengers in national polling. He even got a brief bump in his numbers after his most recent criminal indictment on federal charges related to his decision to keep boxes full of classified documents in a bathroom at his Florida golf club.
In an alternate timeline, one where much of the Republican party hadn't morphed into a sort of Trump personality cult, a candidate like Burgum would be using the indictment against Trump. Instead, Burgum is talking about pressing criminal inquiries against the incumbent, President Joe Biden.
Though to be fair, Burgum isn't explicitly letting Trump off the hook. He's not saying his primary opponent is innocent, or that he'll be pardoned by a future Burgum administration, only that the law should be applied evenly.
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Burgum was asked recently about a pardon, and his answer has been reported as a "dodge" in many places. Which isn't entirely unfair, but there's more nuance to his answer than he's being given credit for.
On Friday, June 16, talk radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Burgum if he'd pardon Trump should the decision be left up to him.
“I mean, from a leadership standpoint, you’re asking me a hypothetical question about something from two years from now when we don’t even know if this is going to go forward, or if there’s even going to be a conviction,” Burgum responded.
“So I think, I just tend to stay away from hypotheticals whether it’s hey, will you sign a bill, and the bill isn’t even at my desk and it’s going to have 100 twists and turns before that," he continued.
It's a prudent answer. However guilty Trump may seem at this juncture, there is a criminal justice process that has yet to play out.
Trump has to be convicted before he can be pardoned.
I'm not sure that an answer that treats the criminal justice process as something more than a formality is a "dodge."
Still, Burgum is walking a tightrope on the issue between cultish Trump followers who think the former president can do no wrong, and folks who are anti-Trump, who are already talking about a pardon before there is even a conviction.
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