DeSantis and Other GOP Presidential Candidates Respond to Trump’s Georgia Indictment
DeSantis: “And so, I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country.”
A few GOP presidential candidates have responded to the Georgia indictment against President Donald Trump.
I wonder if we’ll hear anything from Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis:
“So, I haven’t had a chance to read it all. But I will tell you, 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. And so they’re now doing an inordinate amount of resources to try to shoehorn this contest over the 2020 election into a RICO statute, which was really designed to be able to go after organized crime, not necessarily to go after political activity. And so, I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country. But I think a lot of Republican voters are looking at some of the things that have happened, whether it’s the Department of Justice, whether it is some of the things that have happened locally, and I think the question is, okay, ‘what are we going to do about it?’ And I’ve already said, as president, we are going to end the weaponization of federal agencies like the DOJ and FBI. 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. Now, in terms of some of these local DAs: in Florida, we’ve actually suspended two — one in Tampa and one in Orlando — over the last year for failure to follow their duties and responsibilities. And as President, we will lean in against some of these local prosecutors if they are not following the law or if they are abandoning their duty to enforce the law evenly. So I think that — I don’t know how it’s going to affect anything politically. For me, at the end of the day, it’s about ‘let’s get this country in a good direction.’ We need to have confidence in our justice system again, but before we get there, we need major, major accountability.”
DeSantis reacts to Trump's indictment in Georgia in response to questions from New Hampshire media:
"So, I haven't had a chance to read it all. But I will tell you, Atlanta has huge problems with crime right now. And there has been an approach to crime which has been less than… pic.twitter.com/9d8kNaeh33
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) August 15, 2023
Sen. Tim Scott:
“We’ve seen the legal system being weaponized against political opponents, that is un-American and unacceptable.”
Tim Scott responds to the latest Trump indictment: “we’ve seen the legal system being weaponized against political opponents, that is un-American and unacceptable.”
He says he heard the Georgia call but won’t answer @alivitali if he would make the same ask for votes as prez. pic.twitter.com/sqTrGhhzJc
— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) August 15, 2023
Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy responded:
Here we go again: another disastrous Trump indictment. It’s downright pathetic that Fulton County publicly posted the indictment on its website even before the grand jury had finished convening. Since the four prosecutions against Trump are using novel & untested legal theories, it’s fair game for him to do the same in defense: immediately file a motion to dismiss for a constitutional due process violation for publicly issuing an indictment before the grand jury had actually signed one. He should make a strong argument on these grounds & it would send a powerful message to the ever-expansive prosecutorial police state. As someone who’s running for President against Trump, I’d volunteer to write the amicus brief to the court myself: prosecutors should not be deciding U.S. presidential elections, and if they’re so overzealous that they commit constitutional violations, then the cases should be thrown out & they should be held accountable.
Here we go again: another disastrous Trump indictment. It’s downright pathetic that Fulton County publicly posted the indictment on its website even before the grand jury had finished convening. Since the four prosecutions against Trump are using novel & untested legal theories,… pic.twitter.com/LOYkGcCgm5
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 14, 2023
Also:
Some establishment Republicans are actually *cheering on* the latest Trump indictment as their solution to “take back” the party. If you want to “take back” the party, do it by convincing voters of your vision, not by celebrating the arrest of someone who led the party in a different direction.
Some establishment Republicans are actually *cheering on* the latest Trump indictment as their solution to “take back” the party. If you want to “take back” the party, do it by convincing voters of your vision, not by celebrating the arrest of someone who led the party in a… https://t.co/9kYDamlh50
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 15, 2023
Gov. Chris Christie:
Christie called it unnecessary:
He explained that local prosecutors would typically defer to the Department of Justice (DOJ) when their investigations overlap, questioning why Georgia prosecutors did not do so in this case, given that Trump was indicted federally this month regarding Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“I think that this conflict is essentially covered by the federal indictment, not with the level of detail that they covered in this, but that’s just a stylistic thing,” he said. “Election interference is election interference. It’s been charged by Jack Smith, and most of the time what you’d see here would be a state court deferring to a federal prosecution. Especially if that federal indictment had already been issued. So I think this was unnecessary, as to Donald Trump.”
His tone regarding to Trump’s latest indictment is notably different from his stance on the DOJ indictments. Christie has cast himself as a leading Trump critic in the Republican primary and has been critical of Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 presidential election.
He also said:
Chris Christie on the latest Donald Trump Georgia indictment: "I didn't think it was a necessary thing to do once you saw that Jack Smith was charging him federally for the very same conduct." The indictments both deal with Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/TS53JaDOPd
— Omar Jimenez (@OmarJimenez) August 15, 2023
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson
Asa thinks Trump should go away.
Read my statement on the fourth indictment of #DonaldTrump.
Donald Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding our nation’s highest office again.
I’m ready to take the case to him on the debate stage. Help me qualify here: https://t.co/0t63rhb8WJ pic.twitter.com/id3lBljEHe
— Gov. Asa Hutchinson (@AsaHutchinson) August 15, 2023
Larry Elder
Larry Elder called the indictment unfair:
2024 Watch-New: #GOP presidential candidate @larryelder tells @FoxNews the latest #DonaldTrump criminal indictment's "incredibly unfair. All Donald Trump did is to suggest that maybe about 11,700 votes might be out there that weren’t counted" #2024Election #FITN #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/mWL3ZlVbh0
— Paul Steinhauser (@steinhauserNH1) August 15, 2023
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Comments
I do wonder if the intent of states filing charges against Trump is to keep Trump off the ballot in that state. They don’t have to prevent his nomination IF they can keep him off the ballot in the 5 states that flipped over night in the last election. So this time around, instead of 5 states stealing the election in the back end, this time they steal the election at the front end. I now await Milhouse to tell me I’m an idiot. Welcome back, Milhouse. 😉
The question is really not whether they have legal authority to do what you suggest. I think we’ve pretty well established that they don’t care about the rule of law. They’ll try to impose any penalty that they think they can forcibly impose.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen, and I’ve said it since last year.
They intend to convict him of ANYTHING. The actual crime or whether it stands up on appeal is irrelevant. They need a conviction.
Then they can clutch their pearls, declare ‘NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW’, and remove him from the ballot.
And by the time the cowardly Roberts gets around to ruling on it (if he even bothers to rule), then it will be too late.
You think the corrupt Hobbs will allow him to be on the ballot in Arizona? Or Raffenweasel will allow him to be on the ballot in Georgia?
“You think the corrupt Hobbs will allow him to be on the ballot in Arizona? Or Raffenweasel will allow him to be on the ballot in Georgia?”
Yes. Note well that Gene Debs was behindfederal bars in 1920, yet managed to be on the ballot in all 48 states. Your case would be stronger if you would describe the method hobbs/Raff would use in their state statutes to knock Big Don off those ballots.
I’ve said it since last year, you are a lazy piece of combustible rubbish, speciializing in scaring yourself with off-the-rack mass paranoias..
What? They can make up fake indictments but you don’t think they can make up some fake reason to keep him off the ballot? You act like these Communists have any respect for the law
Yes. They can make up fake indictments, but they can’t make up some fake reason to keep him off the ballot, because there aren’t any such reasons available. If he is excluded from any state’s ballot, he will sue and the courts will order him restored.
You have far more confidence in the integrity of the courts than I do.
If that’s their cunning plan, it has one slight flaw: They can’t keep him off the ballot, no matter what they charge him with, or even what they convict him of.
The only offense that, in principle, might be enough to keep someone off a presidential ballot would be if he were convicted of having engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the USA, or given aid or comfort to the USA’s enemies, while under oath of office not to. However:
1. No state is charging him with any of those things, and I doubt there’s any state with a law against any of those things, since they’re crimes against the USA, not against the state. (Also, of course, he didn’t commit those crimes; but given the political climate that’s only a minor consideration.)
2. That would disqualify him from being “a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State”. Note which office is missing from that list: President of the USA. No, the presidency is not an “office under the USA”.
3. Likewise the office he would have to have held while committing the offense is limited to: “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State”. Again, note which office is missing.
4. “Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” Congress did just that in 1872, and did not specify that it was only doing so for past offenses. The language of the statute plainly says it was removing the disability for everyone except for those explicitly listed. Therefore it would cover Trump. Yes, the 4th Circuit disagrees; I think the 4th Circuit is wrong, and that if a state tried removing Trump from the ballot the Supreme Court would say it was wrong.
Like the executive cant change state election laws kind of thing?
I’m afraid the flaw in your reasoning is thinking that the democrats, their activist prosecutors, and biased complicit courts really care about fairly applying the law.
Milhouse: Please explain how President of the United States of America is NOT included in “any office, civil or military, under the United States”.
(Note: This is a serious and respectful question, not the usual snark and derision often directed your way by other commenters.)
The only way that makes sense is if the office of the President is OVER the United States. If so, would the President not also be OVER AND ABOVE any law or Constitutional principle, and be unbound by them?
IANAL, but it seems to me, either the office of the President is bound by the Constitution and laws of the United States, or it is not. If it is, then it is under the United States. If it is not, then the Constitution and laws mean nothing in the face of Executive Orders because the office of the President is over and above them — and we have much bigger things to worry about than whether or not Donald J. Trump can become President again.
If I’m wrong or you have another perspective, please share it.
Thanks, Milhouse. I genuinely appreciate the legal analysis. The one fear that gives me pause, is the disregard of liberals for the law is advanced by their skill at clock/game management. Like Trump pointed out in his reply to the GA filings, they’ve had since Jan 2021 to file their case / indictments. Yet are doing so only now, that the 2024 election is starting up, together with proposed dates and schedules that seem designed to interfere with significant campaign events. If they were successful in their manipulations through activist judges and timed the decisions well, I can see a situation where an appeals court and/or state elections office did not have time to overrule a decision and print / distribute corrected ballots. Trump could be written in of course, but where votes have been splitting in the 51/49 ratio the last several cycles, it wouldn’t take much to throw the election to the manipulators. Our side always seems to be playing defense and suck at clock management.
Wow. You’d think that republic ending abuses of prosecutorial authority would merit a little impassioned outrage. Apart from Vivek Ramaswamy and Larry Elder, these responses are pathetic. DeSantis sounds like he’s competing in a high school debate challenge.
Really, the only thing that grates my ear about DeSantis’s response is his repetitive recourse to the royal plural. It absolutely rubs me the wrong way.
He’s a dick
Meh. Use ‘I’ in repetition and everything you say is about you and diminishes the fact you have a staff of folks and by implication voters who all either agree with or helped implement the decision.
He played baseball in College and ‘we’ is standard coach speak. They use it instead of ‘I’ to denote there is an organization responsible not a solitary individual; ‘We won the game’, ‘We executed our game plan’.
“Some establishment Republicans are actually *cheering on* the latest Trump indictment as their solution to “take back” the party.”
This and RINOs are why I support Trump as opposed to the Republican party. I am hearing on the news that Trump has launched a counter attack, Trump is a fighter, that is what we need. I have an innate distrust of politicians, that is based on a great deal of experience.
Democrats have made things so bad that to remedy the matter requires getting into the gutter where they reside. They will understand deterrence. Time to criminalize actual crimes and start an impeachment inquiry pronto. Bribery is specified in the Constitution. It’s not only the right thing to do, but past time to fight illegal fire with legal fire.
As for the remarks, Ramaswamy stands out again. But why did he float a pardon of the Bidens? DeSantis seems off key. He would have helped himself by saying he would fire Willis. As for the Trump haters, the pretend distaste was transparent, even though we are experiencing a frontal assault on America that supersedes Trump. Time for all of them to start shouting!
I think he floated the pardon idea as a hope that he won’t ACTUALLY have to lower himself to prosecuting crimes.
Seemed like weakness to me, that he wants to pardon him so they can ‘start healing’ and don’t have to actually prosecute him for crimes.
Hello? He can’t fire Willis, a GEORGIA DA–even as president. But it’s a good idea anyway.
You misunderstood. He talked about how he fired DA’s in Fla. Rather, or in addition, he might have mentioned he would fire Willis if he could. To pressure Kemp, who now has that same type of executive power. Come on.
Kemp does not have the power to fire district attorneys. Not even under the new legislation, which gives that power to a commission that has yet to be set up, and that the governor will not control.
and yet they all stay in the race
a bunch of Stewart Swintons
I know, they are all cowards and General Washington would have hung them already
Vermin.. all of them
Yeah all cowards none of whom volunteered to serve in uniform during time of war….oh wait that doesn’t apply to one of the candidates.
Not to worry he can be replaced in your coward rant by another prominent candidate who also failed to volunteer to serve in his generation’s war.
the higher courts don’t want to get involved but they may have to
remember when Sentelle replaced Fiske with Starr ?
Uh…. Where is GOP Chairmoron Ronna Romney McDaniel?
Ask Donald Trump. He endorsed her to become Chairwoman of the GOP.
Fûck all what the candidates say. They are flaccid cocks of no use to anyone. What I want to know is where are the Republican Representatives and Senators, and what are they doing to put a stop to this?
Where are the indictments against Biden, Biden, Biden, and the rest of the Biden crime family?
Where are they in relation to holding the destruction of the United States at bay?
Fûcking eunuchs, every damned one of them.
Neither the Republican representatives nor the senators can indict anyone.
Welcome back Milhouse.
I know that you have an ability to read, and I hope your absence did not impair that ability to read and reason.
If you notice, my question about Reps and Senators, and my comment about indictments, appear in two different paragraphs, not two sentences within a paragraph.
Do better, and for once quit being a dïck.
So whom were you exhorting to make these indictments, if not the reps and senators? Who are the “they” and “them” in the 3rd and 4th grafs?
Done ejaculating over everything?
Do you like spreading your seed and expecting everyone to explain everything to you?I was merely pondering what can be done by the Republican Lu and before we lose this country.
But you?
EXPLAIN YOURSELF?
Please do me a favor and stop commenting on my posts if I don’t give you everything you need?
Or are Ok with our country being taken out from under us?
You: Boo Hoo. No one can do anything. We are stuck because the democrats control everything,
1. You mention indictments exactly once in your original comment, not “in two different paragraphs”.
2. Representatives can impeach a sitting office-holder; they cannot impeach just any person for any thing, and they do not issue indictments. They could vote to impeach the President, but there’s little they can do about any of his family; they are not office-holders. Senators act as a jury during an impeachment trial, not as a grand jury before trial. Or did you not read the Constitution?
3. The DoJ can push for indictments against all the Bidens, but the DoJ is currently RUN BY the Biden patriarch (take that, feminists!), so the odds of that happening are approximately zero; nobody in the DoJ is going to file charges against their boss or his family!
Think things through, and try again.
Is there no remedy for indicting someone for not breaking any law?….How is telling people to watch TV a “furtherance of a conspiracy”?
Yes there is. A motion to dismiss.
Motion to dismiss with prejudice, meaning that without new evidence charges cannot be re-filed.
If it’s really bad, you can petition the American Bar Association to investigate and explore disbarment against the prosecutor. (It would have to be truly, horrendously bad; they lean pretty far Left.)
This is a benefit to Trump. He likes being indicted, it makes him a victim. Supposedly, he is taken up the cross the government has meant for us. The Jan 6 defendants are still in jail. He’s done nothing to help them. I think on both sides there is high school level drama. The “insurrection” struck me as comedy when I first saw it, then all the DC politicians carrying on like it was 9/11 was preplexing. We’ve become reality tv nation. And it sucks.
V. R. is a blank slate. Be careful cheerleading for him. The last blank slate wasn’t that great for us.
Voted for Trump the last time, don’t know that I can do that again. If he is the last best hope, it won’t matter. He’ll serve 1 term, be relaced by a Democrat like Newsome or Whitmer possibly.
Politicians don’t need that large of support, just the people most likely to vote. Outrage rarely works.
The country is not divided North/South, like it was during the last civil war, but it IS divided into relatively uniform geographical areas. The problem is that these areas are interspersed throughout the country.
The division is between the urban parasites and the suburban-rural producers.
In my (former) home in the Heart of the Hive™ of Minneapolis/St. Paul the boundary is quite clear in the “ring-road” of the 494/694 circle. Pretty much, with few exceptions, everything inside that circle is a doomed set of parasites. There is almost zero creation of wealth inside that area, only the transfer of existing wealth from producers to parasites, and from one set of parasites to another. There are still a few productive people living there (I used to be one and my job was outside the circle) but they are being subsumed by the parasites.
Every major (and by no coincidence Dem-wing run) US city has this problem. And it cannot be solved by voting, since the parasites quite naturally vote in their own short-term self-interest, with ever-increasing levels of “government” subsidies for the non-productive. Section 8 housing, free medical care, free food, free clean drinking water…everything that the productive have to pay for on their own, plus paying for the parasitic consumption of these things. The fact that they are voting themselves into de facto slavery completely escapes them.
Outside of these areas the productive continue to struggle to support not only themselves but also the parasites, including a governmental system that comprises somewhere on the order of 1/3rd of the population. Add up city, local, county, state and federal employees, the vast and overwhelming majority of whom are non-productive parasites (with the exception of SOME of the judicial, police and national defense) and that’s what it adds up to.
Given that the 17th Amendment essentially destroyed the Constitutional concept of federalism by providing that BOTH houses of Congress are directly elected, our entire federal government is now a simple popularity contest. If we eliminated the 20 largest cities from the electorate the country would be overwhelmingly conservative. But this will also never happen, since disenfranchising the parasites is a pipe dream. Personally I’d advocate land ownership of a minimum of one city-size lot as a franchise requirement, making it necessary to have some skin in the game in order to vote, but that’s now regarded as hopelessly “elitist”. As though our elite-wannabe’s have any interest in actual democracy.
Trump will be persecuted/prosecuted until he’s no longer able to serve a term, regardless of how ridiculous the charges.
I used to think that I’d be dead before I saw the collectivists destroy our country, now I fear that I won’t be. I’ll be dead within 6 months of the country’s collapse since I’m on a life-supporting drug that requires a high level of civilization to maintain a supply, so I’ll just be a speed-bump on the road to anarchy. Our children, if any live, will be amazed that we threw away our civilization for the sake of the abject nonsense perpetuated since Marx.
One thing you CAN control is where you choose to live, work and play. When folks choose to stay in a blue jurisdiction they are also choosing to kick up tax dollars to support the ideological d/prog who control it.
Remaining in that blue State provides another person at minimum to bolster their population for census and apportionment of Congressional Districts.
IOW those who are choosing to remain in blue States are contributing financially to the ideology that seeks to repress you and the rest of us; property tax, sales tax, income tax, excise tax, franchise tax and so on. Don’t forget that many of the businesses in these blue areas provide campaign contributions to the d/prog so any money you provide via patronage at these businesses a portion of their revenue goes to these ideological d/prog politicians. Finally the matter of representation in the HoR can’t be overstated; if you stay whether you are single or have a family you increase the political power of d/prog at the Nation level..
While there is an urban v rural divide within every State the overall political contest is between Red State populations and Blue State populations.
That is exactly correct, and why I explain to our neighbors in our 4-year home in NW Wyoming that, “We are political and economic refugees from the Soviet Socialist State of Minnesota”. We have no income tax here, and while our property taxes are increasing it’s nowhere near the rate it was in the Heart of the Hive™. We stayed there until I retired, since my job was limited to that area, and then got out as fast as we could.
But one thing I was trying to point out is that there are NO “Blue State populations”, there are only Blue Urban Megaplexes in otherwise Red States. Even in MN, there are Hennepin County (Mpls), Ramsey County (St. Paul) and the tiny areas surrounding Duluth and Rochester that routinely vote Communist. The entire urban area of the state votes for freedom and personal responsibility. Remember, collectivists love to, well, collect together.
Oops, poor proofing. In the next to last sentence read “urban” as “rural”. Sorry.
Pretend it’s a beauty pageant::
“What is your reaction to the Democrat Party using the justice system and their armed agents to indict and attempt to imprison a political opponent because he will absolutely smoke them at the polls in 2024 if the elections are honest?”
[Miss Contestant #1] – So, I haven’t had a chance to read it all. But I will tell you, Atlanta has huge problems with crime right now
[Miss Contestant #2] – So I think this was unnecessary
[Miss Contestant #3] – Donald Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding our nation’s highest office again.
Many people that previously listened to the propaganda that Trump was bad are waking up and seeing all that is being thrown against him by every government agency, media, and politician. Forget polls as I never believe them. The Constitution cannot keep Trump off the ballot in any state even if he is in prison and he will be voted for, even better then 2020. What I worry about is that if they steal the election again is that we will go into CW2 and it will be the end of our country.
What I worry about is when Trump loses the general election because he is TOXIC and more than half the nation will never, ever vote for him (any more than we would vote for Hillary), his deluded acolytes swearing it was stolen despite this already known fact.
They will work themselves into a lather, and if they try to start a CW2, they will find that a lot of us aren’t interested in joining in because they are completely off the rails, ignoring that they are supporting someone who simply cannot win the general and are already planning to screech that it was “stolen.”
I’m pretty sure that whole CW2 thing won’t go well since you guys are not even a majority in the GOP—-most supposed Only Trumpers aren’t even Republicans at all and have been advocating CW2 for decades, long before Trump, to “restore” the Republic. Totally nuts, of course, since the Constitution provides the only roadmap we need, but these “right wing” anarchist crazies have latched onto Trump, i.e. are not Trump loyalists at all, because they just want to see our Republic fall so they can magically rebuild it like it’s 1776. Talk about delusional. But yeah, get back to us on how that whole CW2 thing works out.