Republicans rallied around former President Donald Trump Sunday, blasting his possible prosecution by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as a politically motivated attack.
“It just feels like a politically charged prosecution here. And I, for my part, I feel like it’s just not what the American people want to see,” said former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC.
“The fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting President Trump is his top priority, I think…just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” said Pence.
GOP Representative Byron Donalds of Florida said the potential arrest of Trump over an alleged hush money payment to former stripper and porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election is “one of the worst uses of the justice system we have ever seen.”
“This kind of two-tier prosecution, this gotcha mentality with the criminal justice system, is flat-out wrong,” Donalds said on a Sunday talk show on Fox News.
“And, Maria, let me also say this. There have been in the past uses of the criminal justice system in America that have been wrong. It’s been about targeting. It’s been wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right,” said Donalds.
“Just going after your political adversary in, President Trump, isn’t going to make you some pillar of virtue. It’s going to descend all of America into further chaos, not what we need — not what we need at all,” Donalds continued.
Reports circulated in the media last week that former President Trump is expected to be indicted by the Manhattan DA’s office over the alleged hush money payment.
The former president on Trump’s Truth Social media platform said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.
Trump pointed out “ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE” as evidence that he would soon be arrested and charged.
“The FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” said Trump in one of many messages he posted Saturday morning.
Trump: Prosecutor is “taking his orders from D.C.”
On Sunday, the former president issued a statement tying President Joe Biden to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation and claimed the prosecutor was “taking his orders from D.C.”
“I beat them TWICE, doing much better the second time, and despite their DISINFORMATION campaign, they don’t want to run against ‘TRUMP’ or my GREAT RECORD!” continued Trump.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is calling for an “immediate” investigation into what he claims is a “politically motivated prosecution.”
On Sunday, North Carolina Republican Representative Patrick McHenry was asked about Rep. McCarthy’s comment and if Congress should use “federal funds from U.S. taxpayers on a political errand.”
“I think the viable question for the American people is whether or not you have a progressive prosecutor using the justice system to go after political enemies for a political splash. And that seems to be the case here with the Manhattan DA,” said McHenry on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
GOP New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who is mulling a 2024 presidential bid, says he believes Democrats have miscalculated by attacking the former president.
“And, as you pointed out, this is likely some sort of misdemeanor on an issue seven years ago. This has nothing to do with Jan. 6. There’s folks out there that still think this has something to do with Jan. 6,” said Sununu.
Sununu continued, “I just think that the — not just the media — but really a lot of the Democrats have misplayed this, in terms of building sympathy for the former president. And it does drastically change the paradigm as we go into the ’24 election.”
Republican Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee leading the GOP investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, said the potential indictment of Trump was “another example of a two-tier system of justice.”
“It’s very odd that this would come out just the very next day after I revealed bank records, which showed that the Biden family, the president in particular, hasn’t been truthful with respect to his family receiving payments directly from the Chinese Communist Party. So, it almost looks like it’s an effort to detract, but at the very least, it’s another example of a two-tier system of justice,” said Comer.
“We’ve been looking into these classified documents. We saw the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago for one set of supposedly bleak mishandled classified documents, but yet Joe Biden’s had at least five different locations have mishandled classified documents, and they get him days and days to go in and clean up with his attorney,” said Comer.
