Republican presidential candidates on Sunday downplayed the seriousness of former President Donald Trump’s legal troubles in the face of more potential criminal charges — perhaps because the White House hopefuls have no choice.
Mr. Trump says he expects to be charged again by special counsel Jack Smith, this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Smith also brought charges for alleged mishandling of classified documents after Mr. Trump left office. The former president is also facing charges in Manhattan for alleged campaign finance violations from hush-money payments to women before the 2016 election.
Former Vice President Mike Pence said he believes another criminal indictment would “only contribute” to the feelings among Americans that the Department of Justice has “lost the confidence” of U.S. citizens.
“I do think that the Department of Justice has lost the confidence of the American people,” the GOP presidential candidate said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I’ve said many times that the president’s words were reckless, that I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence continued. “But while his words were reckless, based on what I know, I’m not yet convinced they were criminal.”
Fellow 2024 Republican White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said he believes Mr. Trump showed poor judgment about the U.S. Capitol attack but that he did not commit a crime.
“I’ve been consistent all along that I would have made different judgments than Donald Trump made. That is why I am running in this race for the presidency, the same race that he’s in, because I would have made different — and I believe better — judgments for the country,” Mr. Ramaswamy said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But a bad judgment is not the same thing as a crime. And when we conflate the two, that sets a dangerous precedent for this country.”
The entrepreneur has vowed that, if elected, he would pardon Mr. Trump.
“I don’t want to see us become some banana republic, where the party in power uses police force to arrest its political opponents,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.
Former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan suggested Sunday that the crowded field of preferential candidates is failing to chip away at Mr. Trump’s commanding lead in the polls because his legal troubles are taking up too much of the focus.
An outspoken critic of the former president, Mr. Hogan said the criminal charges have failed to “hurt Trump the way that most people would imagine it should have hurt Trump.”
“The fact that nobody else can get any traction or attention because all we’re talking about is Donald Trump’s legal troubles,” he said on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” “While people haven’t left Trump as quickly as I would have hoped, there are about half of the people in the Republican primary who do not want Donald Trump. They just can’t decide on which of the other 11 candidates they want to support because they aren’t — they aren’t getting much oxygen or airtime.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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