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In remarks that set him apart from the rest of Nebraska's Congressional delegation and most GOP politicians across the country, U.S. Rep. Mike Flood called on "people on all sides of the political spectrum to respect the rule of law" Friday following .

Flood, who represents Nebraska's 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a statement to the Journal Star that Trump's conviction marked "the first step in the judicial process" and that he "fully expect(s)" Trump to appeal his conviction, but urged people to respect the judicial process as it "continues to play itself out."

The congressman's statement does not mark a rebuke of his party's presumptive presidential nominee. Flood has endorsed Trump's candidacy and, in March, his PAC donated $5,000 to Trump's fundraising committee — as much as Flood's PAC has given to any political campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Still, Flood's reaction to Thursday's news — that when a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex — differed starkly from the rest of Nebraska's federal officeholders.

Both of Nebraska's U.S. senators, in their own statements to news outlets Friday morning, labeled Trump's trial as "political" and suggested the verdict, delivered by 12-person jury, was preordained or unfair.

"Weaponizing our judicial system for political gain is beyond the pale," Sen. Deb Fischer said in a statement. "This trial and its outcome were carefully manufactured for political retribution — not equal justice under the law.

"(Former) President Trump’s critics believe they’ve wounded him, when in fact, they’ve only wounded our country. I expect this conviction will be appropriately overturned."

Sen. Pete Ricketts, meanwhile, said Trump's trial was merely meant to boost the political career of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and to hurt Trump's reelection efforts.

"It is terrifying to see an institution so central to our republic taken over by activists trying to manipulate the democratic process," Ricketts said. "This trial has undermined American confidence in our judicial system. I look forward to Donald Trump’s appeal and hope that process will be more fair than what we have seen to date.�

Staffers for both Republican senators did not respond to emailed questions Friday about what evidence has led the federal delegates to believe Trump's trial was improper or that his conviction will be overturned.

U.S. Reps. Don Bacon and Adrian Smith, of Nebraska's 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts, both criticized the outcome and prosecutors Thursday on social media.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, for a crime very seldom charged led by a prosecutor who campaigned on going after Trump."

"That undermines the credibility of the verdict," Bacon wrote. "I have trust in our legal system which includes the appeals process."

The reactions offered by most of Nebraska's Congressional delegation — save for Flood — mirrored that of Trump himself. He called the proceedings against him "a rigged, disgraceful trial" moments after he was convicted of the charges that carry a sentence of up to four years behind bars.

He is scheduled to be sentenced July 11, days before he is expected to be formally named the GOP nominee for president.

Flood's reaction to the former president's conviction is an outlier not only in Nebraska, but among GOP politicians and pundits nationwide, 

House Speaker Mike Johnson called the charges against Trump "ridiculous" and his trial "a purely political exercise, not a legal one.�

Some called for the judge who oversaw the case ." Others of America's democracy.

Flood was unavailable Friday for an interview to expand on his statement, a spokesman said.

His decision not to cast immediate doubt on Trump's prosecution or the New York jury's verdict is not indicative of the political realities of Nebraska's reliably Republican 1st Congressional District, where Flood won his first full two-year term in the House in 2022 with nearly 58% of the vote.

Flood's run for reelection this year against state Sen. Carol Blood doesn't even figure to be Nebraska's most competitive race for Congress.

That distinction belongs to the 2nd Congressional District, where Bacon is locked in what's expected to be a close reelection battle against state Sen. Tony Vargas, a Democrat who Bacon narrowly beat in 2022 to hold onto his House seat.

In appearances in Lincoln, his district's largest city, Flood has exalted the need for civility and bipartisanship and has declined to entertain 2020 election conspiracies.

He has also made intentional efforts to "do a good job by the people of the city of Lincoln," which is Nebraska's second largest city and among its only Democratic strongholds.

Flood's own rise to Congress is inherently linked to the prosecution of a politician.

A former state lawmaker from Norfolk, Flood initially catapulted from Nebraska's statehouse to Washington when he won a June 2022 special election that followed former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry's resignation from Congress.

Fortenberry's resignation came two days after he was convicted by a federal jury in California of concealing illegal campaign contributions and two counts of lying to federal agents.

His conviction was overturned in December by a federal appeals court that agreed with Fortenberry’s argument that the trial should not have taken place in California. He now faces similar charges in Washington, D.C.

Fortenberry's camp has called the refiled charges proof that federal prosecutors under Biden's Department of Justice are being allowed to "weaponize the government’s vast prosecutorial power for their own personal and political reasons" — mirroring the same language deployed this week by Trump supporters enraged by his conviction.

But Fortenberry, unlike Trump, .

“Certainly, I think Congressman Fortenberry has got a lot of uncertainty with regard to whether he would be able to remain in the job with this indictment,� Ricketts, who was then Nebraska's governor, .

The juxtaposition of how Nebraska's top Republicans have responded to Trump's trial and conviction compared to Fortenberry's indictment highlights how beholden the GOP is to the former president, said Jane Kleeb, the chair of Nebraska's Democratic Party, who noted Trump's grip on state Republicans appears strong even as Fischer and Ricketts outperformed him in this month's primary.

"It's no longer the Republican Party," Kleeb said Friday. "They are the MAGA Party."

"This was like the final nail in the coffin," she added. "This was the ultimate test of Republicans: Do you side with our democratic justice institutions that they brag about supporting, or will they support Donald Trump, the leader of the MAGA Party, above anything else? And they made their choice."