At least two of Donald Trump’s GOP primary challengers stepped up their criticism of the former president after Trump announced that he is a target of an investigation probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Unlike Trump’s two recent indictments, the news has not sent his rivals rushing to his defense and slamming the Justice Department.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis initially said Tuesday at a news conference in South Carolina that there has broadly been “an attempt to criminalize politics.”
Asked whether Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were wrong, DeSantis said: “There’s a difference between being brought up on criminal charges and doing things. Like, for example, I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on. He should have come out more forcefully.
“But to try to criminalize that, that’s a different issue entirely. And I think that we want to be in a situation where you don’t have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail,” DeSantis said, eliciting some applause from the room. “And that’s unfortunately what we’re seeing now.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung tweeted that DeSantis’ comments were “a disqualifying take from an unserious candidate in the last throes of his failed candidacy.”
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said in a statement, “I would have made very different judgments than President Trump did, but a bad judgment is not a crime.”
Ramaswamy went on to say: “It’s a mistake to say he was responsible for Jan. 6. The real cause was systematic and pervasive censorship in the lead-up to those events.” And he issued another statement later in the day, calling a pending indictment “arguably the most dangerous of all to our Constitutional Republic.”
Those statements are departures from their reactions to Trump’s other recent indictments.
In late March, a grand jury in New York City indicted Trump in a hush money case, alleging he made illegal payments to an adult film star to hide an extramarital affair during his 2016 campaign. And last month, Trump was indicted on federal charges for his handling of classified documents.
DeSantis reacted to both indictments by decrying the “weaponization” of the justice system. Ramaswamy also committed to pardon Trump after the classified documents indictment, warning that the country “cannot devolve into a banana republic.”
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley once again criticized Trump’s legal troubles broadly as distractions rather than speak to his actions themselves.
“It’s just going to continue to be a further and further distraction,” Haley told Fox News on Tuesday. “And that’s why I’m running, is because we need a new generational leader. We can’t keep dealing with this drama.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also weighed in, though he has stood out from the rest of the primary field as a consistent Trump critic. After Trump was indicted in the hush money case, Hutchinson called on him to drop out of the race, which he reiterated Tuesday.
“While Donald Trump would like the American people to believe that he is the victim in this situation, the truth is that the real victims of Jan. 6 were our democracy, our rule of law, and those Capitol Police officers who worked valiantly to protect our Capitol,” Hutchinson said in a statement.
“Anyone who truly loves this country and is willing to put the country over themselves would suspend their campaign for President of the United States immediately,” he added. “It is disappointing that Donald Trump refuses to do so.”
