Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis reacted Tuesday to news that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s had sent a target letter to former President Donald Trump regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Trump foreshadowed a third indictment after he received the letter from Smith. The Florida governor responded by criticizing the former president for his failure to reform the Justice Department during his presidency.
“This has shown how when he was in the White House, he didn’t do anything while things were going on,” DeSantis said at a campaign event. “He should’ve come out more forcefully to enforce that. But, to criminalize that, that’s a different issue entirely and I think that we want to be in a situation where we don’t have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail. And that, unfortunately, is what we’re seeing now.”
DeSantis, the former president’s main rival in the 2024 election, also spoke out against the first indictment against Trump regarding his former attorney allegedly paying $130,000 in hush money to ex-video prostitute Stormy Daniels in the lead up to the 2016 election. (RELATED: Trump Responds After DeSantis Reacts To Indictment)
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American,” DeSantis wrote in a March 30 tweet.
Trump also faces another indictment in relation to storing over 300 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.