Larry Hogan is a Republican Never-Trumper who only goes so far with his Never-Trumperism.

As a candidate for Senate against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, our former Maryland governor can’t take his Jamais-Trump act to the extreme and endorse Democrat Kamala Harris for president. That would only hurt his prospects among Maryland Republicans. And that’s why, when asked about his presidential choice last month, Hogan said, “Neither one of the two candidates has earned my vote.”

While understandable politically, Hogan’s retreat from the choice between Trump and Harris in a hugely important election is pretty much in keeping with the former governor’s record. He frequently engages in both-sides-badism, a simplistic and disingenuous view of politics and governance in the time of Trump. During two terms in Annapolis, Hogan took few risks, generally played it safe and avoided controversy, something that might explain his popularity.

And, when it came to Trump, Hogan talked a good game, but when it came to actually challenging Trump’s policies, he was not up for a fight.

With one or two exceptions, he never supported the efforts of then-Attorney General Brian Frosh to sue Trump and the federal government over policies Frosh considered harmful to Marylanders and the country.

This is worth remembering because it raises doubts about Hogan’s pledge of “strong independent leadership” and his claim, in a September interview with The Sun, that he “never hesitated to stand up to the former president.”

In fact, he generally ignored Frosh’s requests for permission to challenge Trump’s legally dubious executive orders on immigration, public health, the environment and worker rights.

It took a resolution of the Maryland General Assembly in 2017 to give Frosh the authority he needed to join other attorneys general to stop some of Trump’s most draconian and regressive abuses of executive power, starting with his original Muslim travel ban.

Frosh is a Democrat and the General Assembly was, and is, controlled by Democrats. So, of course, Hogan and Republican legislators dismissed the whole thing as partisan politics, no matter the legal merits of the cases Frosh brought or joined.

Republicans never acknowledged that Trump presented a special case: A president who owns numerous businesses and properties, creating the potential for conflicts of interest. Also, early on, Trump’s administration signaled determination to undo many of the policies and laws put in place by his predecessor, including the Affordable Care Act.

Frosh believed the state had legitimate standing to challenge some of those actions.

The case that got the most attention was Maryland’s claim that Trump’s hotel in the District of Columbia presented a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Frosh’s suit alleged that Trump, while president, received payments and violated the Constitution by allowing foreign governments to rent hotel rooms in the Trump International Hotel. The suit further argued that Maryland lost tax revenue because hotels in the state had to compete with Trump International for business and that the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel had an edge because its owner lived up the street, in the White House.

“It’s unprecedented,” Frosh said at the time, “that the American people must question day after day whether decisions are made and actions are taken to benefit the United States or to benefit Donald Trump.”

The lawsuit was not successful and was rendered moot when Trump left office in 2021. At one point, a federal appellate court shot it down and questioned why it was even brought, a strong rebuke that supported Trump defenders who dismissed the lawsuit as a political stunt.

But Frosh was unfazed, insisting that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had failed to acknowledge that “President Trump is brazenly profiting from the office of the president in ways that no other president in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought, in the Constitution, to prohibit.”

Who would argue with that today?

If anything, Frosh’s lawsuit cast laser light on how the D.C. hotel could be used by individuals and governments to curry favor with then-President Trump.

On that point, we have a fresh report from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. It says that, while in office, Trump “used the [hotel] to unlawfully take hundreds of payments from a federal agency, the U.S. Secret Service, and also to take legally and ethically questionable payments from federal and state officials, federal job seekers, and [five] presidential pardon recipients.”

Job seekers who booked rooms at the hotel included four people who later became federal judges and eight of Trump’s ambassadors, the report said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat and ranking member of the committee, added this statement: “Despite the tall tale told by Eric Trump, [the former president’s son], that Secret Service agents ‘stay at our properties for free,’ Donald Trump’s hotel repeatedly fleeced the Secret Service, charging it far in excess of approved government per diem rates and even many times the rates charged to hundreds of other patrons — including some of the rooms rented by the Qatari royal family and Chinese business interests — for rooms used by agents protecting members of the Trump family.”

Keep in mind that Raskin’s committee was only able to research 11 months of the Trump presidency because House Republicans blocked Democrats from getting more hotel records.

Republicans talk a lot about “accountability,” but want little of it when it comes to Trump. Even Never-Trumpers only go so far with their Never-Trumperism.