- Republican lawmakers claimed the federal government is releasing new charges against Trump to distract from Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes
- Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors unveiled additional charges against Trump Thursday night over classified documents scandal
- It came after the Department of Justice’s deal with Hunter Biden collapsed, leaving the First Son susceptible to further criminal charges
Republicans reacted with fury to the ‘coincidental’ timing of a bombshell new indictment against former President Donald Trump.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors added additional charges in to the 32-count indictment the former president was already facing for keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday evening.
Among the new charges are allegations that the former president allegedly told aides to ‘wipe’ security footage from his Florida club’s server as a way to foil investigators probing the removal of classified documents from the White House.
These allegations came just one day after the Department of Justice’s ‘sweetheart’ deal with Hunter Biden sensationally collapsed, leaving the First Son susceptible to further criminal charges for alleged deals with China and Ukraine.
Now, Republican lawmakers claim the federal government has only released the new charges to distract from alleged wrongdoings perpetrated by the president’s family.
Only hours after the indictment was unsealed, Fox News reported that members of ‘the Biden family may hold offshore bank accounts’.
‘The DOJ’s decision to pursue additional charges against President Trump is further evidence of the politicization of our nation’s top prosecutorial agency,’ Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, tweeted Thursday night.
‘Amid AG [Merrick] Garland’s dismissal of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton, Tennesseans are tired of two tiers of justice.’
In an interview with FOX News, Sen. Josh Hawley also said it was no coincidence that the charges were announced after Hunter Biden’s deal fell through.
‘Is it any coincidence that the DOJ rushes to add these new indictments today after the Hunter debacle, after their own self-dealing and two-timing is exposed, after they tried to hide from us the true extent of this plea deal that gets blown up and then it’s like, “Oh we got to go indict Trump on something else,’ the Republican from Missouri said.
‘I mean, it’s so brazen right now what they’re doing. It is really a subversion of the rule of law,’ he claimed. ‘I mean, it’s taking the rule of law, turning it on its head.’
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, echoed those sentiments in a statement.
‘The American people understand that Joe Biden and his administration are engulfed in one of the biggest political corruption scandals of all time,’ she said.
‘It is no coincidence that the day after a federal judge throws out Hunter Biden’s corrupt, sweetheart plea bargain, Biden’s DOJ continues its witch hunt against President Trump.’
‘Our Republic is in peril, our justice system is broken,’ she claimed, vowing: ‘House Republicans will continue our work to investigate the Biden crime family and leave no stone unturned in order to deliver accountability on behalf of the American people.’
In the wake of the indictment, Trump also weighed in via his Truth Social platform.
‘Whatever happened to the Crooked Joe Biden Document’s case? He had 20 times more boxes than I did, and he wasn’t covered by the Presidential Records Act. I was!,’ the former Apprentice host wrote in part.
‘When it first came out that Biden had all of these Docs, many Classified, almost everyone, including those on the Left, said, “there goes the case against Trump.” But they waited and waited, got failed prosecutor Deranged Jack Smith, and STRUCK – but did almost nothing on the REALLY BAD Biden Documents case, many stored in Chinatown!,’ he added.
Hawley: Yeah. Now we're down to charging random people. Just throwing those into the indictment.. We cannot allow this to stand. pic.twitter.com/CdfWLaKBf2
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 27, 2023
Even Sen. Ted Cruz, a one-time rival of the former president, spoke out against the indictment Thursday night — going as far as to say Attorney General Merrick Garland should be impeached and removed from office.
‘They’re trying to use the machinery of law enforcement to prosecute [Trump],’ Cruz said of the Democrats in an interview with Newsmax.
‘I think these indictments are a disgrace, and I think Merrick Garland should be impeached and removed from office for allowing the Department of Justice to be turned into a partisan hammer to attack the political enemies of the White House.’
And Vivek Ramaswamy, who is challenging Trump in the Republican primary, called the indictment ‘election interference.’
‘They’re leaving nothing to chance this time,’ he tweeted. ‘Lock him up, facts or law be damned.’
In addition to his comments on Truth Social, former President Trump also spoke out against the indictment.
‘It’s election interference at the highest level,’ he said Thursday. ‘They’re harassing my company, they’re harassing my family and by far, least importantly of all, they’re harassing me,’ he told Fox News.
‘This is prosecutorial misconduct used at a level never seen before,’ Trump said. ‘If I weren’t leading Biden by a lot in numerous polls, and wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee, it wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be happening.’
Trump was hit with a 37-count indictment in June, and has now been charged on three new counts.
The new indictment says Trump, along with Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliviera and his valet Walt Nauta conspired to ‘engage in misleading conduct’ to ‘corruptly’ persuade another person to withhold information.
One new count, Count 40, charges the trio with ‘altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object.’
That relates to the trio requesting an employee to ‘delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.’