JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – While criminal charges pile up for former President Donald Trump, he has continued to assert that he’s been unfairly targeted by the Justice Department and calls it “a witch hunt.”
Many Republicans have lined up to slam the process as political including congressmen from Northeast Florida.
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A fourth indictment of Donald Trump was announced this week.
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While the case is a state prosecution in Georgia it continues fanning the flames of the former president’s defenders.
Mr. Trump and others have reacted to the criminal charges by calling prosecutors partisan and biased. That criticism includes state and federal prosecutors.
“I think the word you’re looking for is weapon weaponized, which is what the Department of Justice has done. It’s being weaponized right now to go after a political opponent of our president,” said Republican Congressman Aaron Bean who represents Nassau, Clay and Duval Counties and will appear on This Week in Jacksonville on Sunday.
The long-time state lawmaker agrees with comments from other conservatives and called the indictments unfair.
“We always took pride in that there was a blind justice in our country, but it appears that Lady Justice now is peeking from her blindfold, and checking, what’s the letter behind your name before I take, I seek justice?” Bean said.
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Some Republicans have pushed back. They include other GOP candidates for president who are running against Donald Trump for the nomination.
“Despite what the former president and his allies have said for now, more than 2.5 years and continue to insist at this very hour, the Georgia election was not stolen and I had no right to overturn the election on January 6,” Republican former Vice President Mike Pence said.
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“Of course, no one’s above the law, and hopefully the truth will come out but it does smell of election interference when you’re putting these charges against a former current candidate, the leading candidate for for the Republican nomination at a time when it’s just a critical moment in history for the election,” Bean said.
Representative Bean went on to say there is a two-tiered justice system playing out, referencing President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and what Bean calls a “sweetheart deal.”
Earlier this month Congressman Michael Waltz from Northeast Florida said, “I do think this is a weaponization of post-election speech... Yet once again we see a criminalization when it comes to Donald Trump. This is dangerously, badly eroding public trust in the fairness of the law and the fairness of the Department of Justice and our institutions.”