by Harold Hutchison
Conservatives and Republicans condemned a new round of charges against former President Donald Trump in the case involving classified material at Mar-a-Lago.
Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed the new charges in a superseding indictment issued Thursday that included charges against Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate owned by former President Trump. Smith initially secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June.
“This is nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their Department of Justice to harass President Trump and those around him,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden.”
“The election interference just keeps getting more egregious every time,” a spokesperson for Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “2016: Obama shamefully deputized the FBI to try to infiltrate Trump’s campaign by using Clinton oppo research as the basis for a FISA warrant. 2020: Big Tech suppressed the most damning piece of evidence against Biden on the eve of an election which almost certainly changed its result. 2024: They’re leaving nothing to chance this time. Lock him up, facts or law be damned.”
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina did not immediately have a comment when contacted by the DCNF, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Now we’re down to charging … random people, just throwing those into the indictment. Is there 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?,” Republican Sen. John Hawley of Missouri asked during an appearance on “the Ingraham Angle.”
“The DOJ’s decision to pursue additional charges against President Trump is further evidence of the politicization of our nation’s top prosecutorial agency,” Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee tweeted. “Amid AG Garland’s dismissal of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden & Hillary Clinton, Tennesseans are tired of two tiers of justice.”
The DOJ’s decision to pursue additional charges against President Trump is further evidence of the politicization of our nation’s top prosecutorial agency. Amid AG Garland's dismissal of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden & Hillary Clinton, Tennesseans are tired of two tiers of justice.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 27, 2023
Other conservatives also blasted the new charges, casting suspicion on the timing.
“Cue an ‘updated’ indictment against Trump from Biden’s @TheJusticeDept to distract from Biden’s unfolding corruption,” former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell tweeted.
“These latest charges filed against President Trump, or nothing more than a diversion,” Real America’s Voice Grant Stinchfield posted on Twitter. “It is no coincidence the superseding indictment comes one day after the Hunter Biden plea deal, falls apart!”
The collapse of the Hunter Biden plea deal was mentioned by others in response to the new indictment.
“With another Trump indictment apparently coming soon, the contrast between the Justice Department’s bend-over-backwards accommodation of Hunter Biden and its pursuit of Trump could be really striking,” Byron York of the Washington Examiner tweeted.
“Lemme get this straight…..The DOJ is going to charge a Mar-A-Lago property manager with tampering with security camera footage,” SiriusXM host Andrew Wilkow posted on Twitter. “But the Secret Service and the FBI crime lab couldn’t nail down a bag of cocaine in the White House? Hardy-Har-Har-Har.”
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Harold Hutchison is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
