On the heels of the former President announcing he’s been informed he’s a target in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election investigation, Republican leaders have jumped to Trump’s defense.
On Tuesday morning, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform,”Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”
“I guess under a Biden Administration, Biden’s America, you’d expect this,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told reporters of the target letter Trump received. “If you notice, recently President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection. So what do they do now? Weaponize government, go after their number one opponent.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), also questioned the timing of the developments, saying, “Now you see the Biden Administration going after President Trump once again, it begs that question—is there a double standard? Is justice being administered equally?”
And Third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik of New York called the news “another example of Joe Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice targeting his top political opponent, Donald Trump.”
President Biden has repeatedly vowed to distance himself from any actions the Justice Department might take under his watch.
During a bilateral press conference at the White House Tuesday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Biden avoided answering any questions he was asked by reporters about Trump.
As far back as December 2020, even before taking the oath of office, Biden said in a CNN interview, “I’m not going to be saying, ‘Go prosecute A, B or C.’ I’m not going to be telling them. That’s not the role. It’s not my Justice Department, it’s the people’s Justice Department.”
And as recently as last month, when the DOJ unsealed the federal indictment against Trump in Smith’s investigation into classified documents Biden said, “I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him,” referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In November, Garland appointed veteran career prosecutor Smith as special counsel to investigate any potential criminal wrongdoing by Trump regarding the 2020 election and the related deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Smith was simultaneously assigned to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents post-Presidency following a a search warranted raid on August 8 by FBI agents on Trump’s Florida country club residence, Mar-a-Lago.
PHOTO: McCarthy commenting on Special Counsel Investigation, Tuesday
