Donald Trump indicted: DeSantis slams ‘criminalization of politics’
Julia Johnson
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) reacted to former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment more than 12 hours after it was handed down, calling it an example of the “criminalization of politics.”
Trump was named in a Monday evening indictment alongside 18 other defendants in a case regarding efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. They were charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
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In a similar fashion to his prior responses to Trump’s indictments and echoing Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) earlier denunciation of the indictment on Tuesday, DeSantis said he plans to “end the weaponization of federal agencies like the DOJ and FBI” if elected in 2024.
“We’ll have a new director. We will have new leadership in the DOJ. We’re going to make sure that there’s a single standard of justice in this country,” he claimed during a press call with New England reporters.
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He noted that the statute Trump is being charged under, RICO, “was really designed to be able to go after organized crime, not necessarily to go after political activity.”
According to DeSantis, Atlanta is using “an inordinate amount of resources to try to shoehorn this contest over the 2020 election.”
While resources are being used in Trump’s case, he noted that “Atlanta has huge problems with crime right now. And there has been an approach to crime which has been less than exacting. I think there have been criminals that have been let out that shouldn’t have been let out.”
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Neither DeSantis’s nor Scott’s campaigns provided statements on the indictment when asked Monday evening. Both responded early on Tuesday instead. Prominent candidates former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley have yet to respond to the new indictment. The two did not provide statements to the Washington Examiner on Monday evening when prompted.
Vivek Ramaswamy, however, preemptively denounced the indictment on Monday afternoon. He further called the indictment “politicized persecutions through prosecution” during a town hall event with NewsNation on Monday night.