GOP presidential hopeful Asa Hutchinson says it’s a ‘mistake’ for party to rally behind Trump
Reese Gorman
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Amid the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump, longshot presidential candidate and former Republican governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson disputed his fellow presidential candidates’ critical statements about the Department of Justice and believes their support for Trump is simply pandering to his base.
On Friday, the Department of Justice unsealed a 37-felony-count indictment confirming what Trump announced the day before: that he would be indicted on charges related to keeping classified documents in his Mar-A-Lago home in Florida after he was president. Immediately, messages of support for the former president and condemnation of the Justice Department started to roll in, including from his presidential opponents, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
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This was strange to Hutchinson, who told the Washington Examiner in an interview at the Western Conservative Summit that it is “not good for the Republican Party” or for voters to have those running for the highest office in the country continue to blindly support the former president and attempt to discredit federal law enforcement.
“It’s puzzling to me,” Hutchinson said. “I think it’s a mistake for the Republican Party to jump so quickly without really knowing all the facts.”
He said it does a “disservice” to the rule of law and to fairness in the country when people immediately disregard a prosecution as political.
Hutchinson, a former federal law enforcement official, said he believes there needs to be reform within the country’s justice system, but claiming that it is weaponized and solely used by the Democratic Party to go after members of the Republican Party just isn’t true.
“They talk about the politicization of the Justice Department, and that’s what you’ve got to build confidence (so) that doesn’t happen,” Hutchinson said. “ It starts with leadership. And this has been abused by both Republican and Democratic administrations. When you look at Donald Trump actually firing attorneys general because they weren’t doing what he wanted to do, that’s called the politicization of the Justice Department.”
He said he believes much of the anti-federal law enforcement talk and support for the embattled former president by 2024 hopefuls is meant to get the base fired up, but he would rather “fire them up with truth.
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“There’s enough truth out there and real issues that we can make a difference on,” Hutchinson said. “Energy policy, controlling spending, border security, I’m passionate about these things. I fight for these things. The base understands it. And so they see the fighting spirit, but I hope they also see a common sense conservative spirit that makes sense.”
Hutchinson wouldn’t commit to supporting the Republican nominee in 2024, despite that being a prerequisite to participate in the Republican primary debates, because “we don’t know how this is going to develop,” he said in reference to Trump’s legal woes.